We were driving back from Arab Street this afternoon, passing a building site for a new MRT station, when the phrase hard graft popped into my head as I observed the various workmen scattered across the site applying themselves to all sorts of tasks. The fact that they were all heavily clad to protect them from the sun and from injury added to the sense of just how physically tough the work was. It put me in mind of when I was a kid watching bricklayers working on construction sites back in the UK in the depths of winter with other labourers shoveling the frozen ground as they worked.
But then it struck me that the word graft now seems more commonly used to refer to corruption, especially the sort that is political in nature. I know this seems an odd change of subject, but the deep contradiction in terms of meaning struck me as particularly jarring. I mean, I'm very much aware of the existence of 'Janus words' that face in very different directions, but going from a word that evokes a feeling of an essential nobility to the same word conjuring a sense of sleaze was quite a switch. Not to mention the notion of grafting a fresh piece of skin upon a wound, for a third meaning.
When I got home I did a bit of research into the origins of the word to see how the contradiction(s) emerged, but didn't get too far. But I was able to figure out that in personal terms I probably encountered the idea of graft as work first, in childhood I think, since hard graft is regarded as informal and British whereas graft as corruption is seen as American. I reckon in recent times - especially the last ten years or so - it's very much entered the lexicon of British political discourse. I intend to listen out for it to confirm my suspicions. I also suspect that hard graft is very much a working class thing in British terms since those are the folks condemned to it.
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