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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t surprising, but I have trouble taking anyone seriously when they use the term “jabs”. I’m rather shocked it’s in the headline of a BBC article.

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Jabs is basically the British equivalent of the American term shots.

Yes. Queens English countries it's the phrase used (New Zealand - that's what we use).

Interesting. I’m so used to only hearing it from people about to rant about vaccine mandates, which has given it quite the negative connotation (for me) on this side of the pond.

While "jab" is used almost universally across UK print and broadcast media to describe an injection, it's interesting to note the choice of accompanying adjective.

The Sun, The Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Times love to use "fat jab".

The BBC, The Guardian and The Mirror seem to prefer "slimming jab" or "weight-loss jab".

There's a lot to digest in those choices.

It is just the usual vice vs. virtue approach to things where 'the right' tends to point at vices which are in need of curtailing while 'the left' points at the virtue in those turning away from such vices. This also relates closely to 'the right' tending to voice support for punishing those who commit vices in some way while 'the left' voices support for rewarding those who turn away from committing them. Deeper down it points down to the preference for personal agency and responsibility on 'the right' versus collective responsibility and a related lack of personal agency on 'the left'.

> 'the right' tending to voice support for punishing those who commit vices

the right spends a lot of time defending a corrupt pedophile ordering invasions and murders, isn't it curious?

Sometimes it is not malicious language. There's a trend in modern journalism towards colloquial, imprecise language that in itself is a reaction to decreasing reading abilities and vocabulary in the general population, as we are now in the descending slope of the Flynn's effect curve.

Also, a journalist nowadays is evaluated as a professional basically by the amount of pageviews he can harvest. There's a strong incentive towards clickbait language.

in this case they’re just British mate

English pedant and RP speaker here. Jabs is a colloquialism in British English, but the BBC website is riddled with grammatical and vocabulary errors daily and rarely rises above a secondary (high school) reading level.

If this was a US-based journalist I’d agree, but the term doesn’t carry the same connotations for the BBC’s home audience

If it had been BBC Scotland you might have seen "jags" instead.

Isn't "jab" just another word for "an injection" not only "a vaccine"?

In the UK, yes.

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