So the Australian government has realised what a succession of previous such governments had failed to recognise or heed, namely that this country’s use,or rather abuse, of the English language has to be reversed and, hopefully, restored to its status of yesteryear.
Yesteryear, when the word bunch was a collective noun for flowers or grapes (or, occasionally, perhaps, fives) but nowadays is used to the exclusion, it would seem, of just about every other collective noun.
As if the use of ‘bunch’ with total disregard isn’t bad enough, the word has metamorphosised to become ‘a whole bunch’.
Pray, tell me. At what stage does a bunch become ‘a whole bunch’? Ten, eleven, twenty-five…?
Or when does ‘a whole bunch’ become ‘a whole new bunch’?
Please. Spare me.