I’ve noticed a growing trend in everyday communication. We’re gradually losing our precision, so that every shouted half of a mobile phone conversation I am subjected to overhear on the bus on the way to and from work is studded with a new word: sord’v (or its estuary cousin, sor’uv; or for those in Geordieland, soart’v).

This lends the whole communication an air of approximation and uncertainty. Recent eavesdropped examples (not exagerated at all for effect):

“I mean it’s sord’v dumb that he should sord’v be all sord’v annoyed with her because she sord’v had a sord’v night out with the girls.”

“I only sord’v said anything because I sord’v knew that she was going to, you know, sord’v use it to make my job sord’v difficult in future. Cow.”

“OK, so you’ve sord’v got to go sord’v round to the right, past the newsagent and it’s sord’v on the left hand side, about a hundred metres past the traffic lights. You’ll’ve sord’v gone too far if you get to the sord’v bend in the road.”

Aren’t we sure anymore? I know it’s only a linguistic tic, a filler word which pads out pauses, but it makes the whole thing so approximate and unsure.

You might have gone too far when you hit that bit of the road that isn’t much like the rest. He could have been irritated with her evening jaunt, but it’s difficult to say, really. I may (or may not) have spoken up in my defence because she might possibly have used the situation to cause a problem in the future.

Or possibly not.