How many existential threats can one person endure in a week? There was I, feeling a little less worried about the state of the world after a pleasant walk in the local park, listening to the chirps of birds when afterwards at a cafe, foolishly, I read the news. My tweet equilibrium was shaken asunder. Have faith, I told myself. There surely can’t be this much existential threat swirling through the air. Breathe in the hope. But for every breath, there it was, the dark shadow of a phrase.

Time was a threat would suffice, but now as of a piece with the viral hunger of the hyperpaced world, it has been adjectivally strangled to within a centimetre of its life, which is apt, one supposes. Threats had become hostage to the adjective existential. Existential threats abounded everywhere. Isn’t one existential threat enough, a weak cry from the heart escaped?

But no, now nothing is really a threat unless it is prefaced with the word. How scary does that make the threat appear? Pretty damn scary. I mean, it’s not merely a threat to X, Y and Z, it’s an existential threat. No one uses that word, surely, without good evidence, and a........

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