Second to None

Of late, one increasingly notices advertisements using the expression “pre-owned” in place of the more familiar term, “second-hand.” Second-hand—yet still quite expensive—electronic goods hawked on the internet are invariably described as “pre-owned,” never “second-hand.” The expression has also entered the vocabulary of newspaper reporting. The unfortunate man who was dragged out of the prison in Dimapur, Nagaland, and lynched by a mob, according to a report in The Telegraph of Kolkata, was engaged in the business of trading in “pre-owned cars.”

Clearly, “second-hand,” with its grimy associations, simply does not fit into the squeaky clean and antiseptic hi-tech culture of the internet generation.  Perhaps it does not also sit well with contemporary newspaper reporting, indeed of the all-pervasive menace represen-ted by a “New India.” The very expression “second-hand,” and a whole cultural universe associated with that formulation, is perhaps on the way out.