T

Abstract

In a manner approved and popularized by the women’s magazines. Those with taste never mention it, those without it talk of little else. Since house agents have no taste whatever — they cannot afford such a luxury — they are among the word’s best customers, always happy to promote the ‘tastefully modernised old semi-detached cottage’ (Western Gazette, June 1982). For something slightly more up-market, the phrase would be SYMPATHETICALLY MODERNIZED and, close to the top, ‘sensitively modernized.’