Endeavour

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“Now look,” said I, flapping my arms: “I am trying”.
“Well, yes”, she replied, “I’ll give you that. You are trying.”
I smiled, flushed with the endorphins of an unexpected compliment.
“Very trying indeed.”
“Oh, right.”

“Endeavour” neatly illustrates the practical problem with plain English. It is a silly word: long; archaic; it conjures images of Captain Spaulding, in a pith helmet, slashing through jungle on the hunt for a pajama-wearing elephant. Its alternative — “try” — is better in every way that a plain speaker cares about: shorter, more idiomatic, clearer, less fussy.

But there lies the problem: “try” slices cleanly through the semantic murk that “endeavour” so skilfully stirs up. It makes clear something the legal eagle rather hoped to obscure: namely, that to promise to try to do something is a feeble covenant, hardly worth the paper it is written on.

Consider:

“The vendor shall endeavour to notify the purchaser of its intention within a reasonable period, but shall not have any liability for failing to do so.”

Which sounds qualified — sure — but at least carrying some meat on its bones.

But the plain English alternative reveals how thin that old hogget really is:

“The vendor must try to tell the purchaser, but isn't responsible if it doesn’t.”

See also

• Best reasonable efforts

• BAU