After the fun of Are you stupid enough to use leverage as a verb? (in which you added well-considered perspectives on the evolution of language to my fairly bald argument of that’s one ugly word) I’m going to have to break my silence about the word bespoke.
Bespoke is another ugly word, this time an adjective, as in:
We provide bespoke software solutions
It is not common in US English, but is increasingly found in Britain being used to describe services, especially in IT. It is traditionally a tailoring term, coming from the archaic verb bespeak, indicating speaking about or arranging something in advance.
Tailors have used it for centuries to describe suits that are hand-made to an individual’s measurements, as opposed to off the peg, pre-cut garments. Originally, the term described the process whereby a piece of cloth would be reserved for an individual customer. It suggested craft, care and unique personalisation. More recently, it has broadened in tailoring to imply anything that is made to measure.
I would happily enter a bespoke tailor’s and buy a bespoke suit (if I could afford it). What I object to is people taking this old-fashioned word that has been so long allied to one profession and applying it liberally to anything else that they think might in some way be adaptable for their customers. Just search Google for ‘bespoke solutions’ and you’ll see what I mean.
Some dictionaries have picked up on this trend, not least the Oxford English Dictionary. But I’m going to dig my heels in and say that’s enough, for the following reasons:
Quite a lot of people don’t know what it means
Ask a few people who aren’t language students or IT professionals what bespoke means and you will draw a few blank expressions. Some of the people I have asked got the connection to tailoring. Others didn’t know at all. If you are looking for ways to describe how your service works to new customers, I would suggest using words that they do not understand is a bad idea.
Especially if they are not British
If you want your website to be comprehended by English speakers outside of the UK, then picking such localised terms will not help. It is fine to have a British tone and personality (if being British is important to your brand), but you do not want your international readers to be reaching for the dictionary to try and decode even the basics about what your business does.
Bespoke is ugly out of context
It is a strange word. Words with the prefix be– have a dated sound to them. It is not a common way to form words in modern English, especially combined with spoke which is the past of a verb. The original verb bespeak has little modern usage. When it comes to suits, this unusual, old sound chimes perfectly with the image of generations of tailors on Savile Row crafting garments to the same exacting standards. But to describe your software or cake company? It just sounds weird.
It is losing potency as a metaphor
Bespoke is an evocative metaphor from tailoring, provided people know what it means. But the more marketers use it to describe anything that is in some vague way customised for the client, the more it loses the richness of the association. It not only fails Orwell’s freshness test but is a case in point for finding ‘an everyday English equivalent‘.
See: customised, custom-made, purpose-built, tailored, made-to-measure, specially designed.
As with leverage it is not just the ugly, contorted formation of bespoke that I object to. It is its weakness as a metaphor: not only that it is ailing, but that many people simply don’t know what it means in the first place. The question of how language progresses aside, it strikes me that if you want to describe your product or service to potential customers in favourable terms, then those terms should be clear and fresh.
Bespoke joins leverage in my dead pool of abused words. Any reason I should fish it out?
A nicely developed approach, building on the discussion last time. I find myself outmaneouvred on 2 of 3 sides:
1) you argue that it isn’t understandable, which anticipates my first instinct – let the people speak. I actually inhabit a world where bespoke IT solutions are frequently proscribed (in favour, you’ll be glad to hear, of ‘off the peg’ or ‘vanilla’ solutions, the former at least rounding off the sartorial image).
However, I found the image pretty instantly understandable, and I wonder if anyone who had spent time buying complex computer packages might do too, as long as they know what the word means. At least this is a relatively empirical question, not a matter of taste, so one of us is right but not because of who’s cleverer.
2) you also say that as a metaphor it is ‘ailing’, or as a tailor might say ‘a poor fit’, because the word itself carries inappropriate echoes of tradition and old-fashioned practices and moreover loses its rich associations when applied in this way.
This objection to the word’s use is, I think, partly justified. The metaphor draws on the unromantic aspect of the lovely word – the process of customising an item for an individual – and isn’t able to draw on its other textures.
An off the cuff riposte, though, would be that this is a metaphor being used as jargon not poetry (if there is a difference), and jargon is a shortcut to get you more quickly to a commonly-desired meaning. Even if it means beautiful words being used in workaday places, isn’t that better than not at all? I had rather people felt ‘bespoke’ on their tongue than not, even if – especially if – they will never feel it crisply framing their shoulders.
Moreover, although clearly some of the richness dies when it gets used repeatedly, that’s always a victim of a metaphor’s success. Any common but beautiful phrase (‘born with a silver spoon in his mouth’, ‘never in a month of sundays’, ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, ‘for ever and ever amen’) suffers the same fate.
3) My third point I think is more fundamental. It’s also the turning point of my disagreement, which is why it’s at the end so you have to have read the rest first.
I don’t think it’s an ‘ugly, contorted formation’ but a rather comfortably fashioned piece of language, like a round, well-polished wooden banister-post. To me, a beautiful word is lovely in most settings, even the dreary ones.
I’d also argue that ‘bespoke’ implies something of quality, attention to detail, and costliness. Perhaps also ongoing care – all things I would be interested in as a potential software buyer (assuming of course that I know what the word means). It doesn’t just imply men with measuring tape, and it isn’t just ‘weird’. So I think it works as a metaphor.
Maybe I’m just unusual – I don’t think I see language ever as ugly. Even when I disapprove of usages (and I disapprove of jargon when as often it permits the injurious absence of clear thinking), I enjoy it as a reflection of the people who use it.
I’m so fed up with the overuse of the word “bespoke” that I googled “overuse of the word ‘bespoke’” and ended up here.
It is, as you say, a tailoring term. I’m not British, but it always makes me think of Savile Row.
I love watching Grand Designs, but if Kevin McCloud uses the word “bespoke” one more time, especially when “custom made” would be more appropriate, I’m done. Recently a builder said he was designing windows especially to suit the space, and Kevin said “so, they are in fact…” (and I thought, “don’t say it, don’t say it…”) “BESPOKE windows”!
No Kevin, they’re custom made windows.
Jeez.
Glad to be of service – providing a space to rant!
I also love G.D.’s, but “bespoke” is driving me insane!
In an attempt to see if I was alone I googled “if Kevin McCloud says bespoke one more time”, and I found you!
Good to know I’m not alone!
Haha I’m another one who has had a gutful of Mr McCloud over using this stupid word…!!!