Bullying is repeated and sustained verbal, physical, social or psychological behaviour by an individual or group, aimed at another individual with the intention of belittling, intimidating or controlling that individual. Bullying is also an insidious and traumatizing process for the victim. In a school, it invariably involves a stronger or older student targeting another younger, weaker or vulnerable student with sustained verbal or physical abuse over an extended period. In the workplace, bullying invariably involves the exploitation of a power imbalance and is often perpetrated by an insecure manager with low self-esteem who targets a vulnerable subordinate.

I’ve watched the devastating effects of bullying and it can have lifelong impacts…

Bullying… is not, an incident!

It annoys me when such a wholly despicable thing as bullying is lumped together with good old bad behavior and reported as: Australian swimmer Matt Targett “reprimanded” over a bullying incident which involved 5 times Olympic medalist Alicia Coutts (pictured). She was allegedly subjected to an incident of aggressive physical and verbal behaviour from Targett which occurred at the Perth tri-series meet in January. 

See the full Telegraph news report here:
• No apology offered by swimmer Matt Targett to teammate Alicia Coutts after bullying incident last January (Daily Telegraph, 20 April 2013)

Not nice for Alicia but if it’s one incident then it doesn’t rise to the level of bullying.

Stretching the meaning of the word, bullying to include any nasty interaction between individuals, dilutes and diminishes the value of the word in describing what it actually represents.  This type of hyperbolic misuse of the word also serves to downplay the devastating impact that actual bullying can have on an individual.

Words matter.

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Have you experienced bullying?
Are there other words that suffer from this type of hyperbolic misuse?

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