Poor Barack Obama. First he has to overcome being born with an off-white skin. Then the mighty machine and still mightier egos of the power-greedy Clintons. And now a single word, even more alarming to many American voters: he is called a liberal.

The word is one of a family spawned by the Latin word liber, free. And a very odd family it is. You may be a libertine, a man who gives free rein to his sexual lusts. Or a libertarian, who reckons there is too much government and especially (as I do) too much official snooping and meddling. Or a believer in liberation theology, who thinks the churches should at last take Jesus Christ’s sympathy with the poor seriously. But the oddest word of all is liberal.

It began life some seven centuries ago to describe those arts and sciences worthy of a free man — philosophy, say, rather than ploughing; and that sense survives in today’s liberal studies — ancient Greek rather than accountancy. Over time, it came also to mean free-handed or generous, as in Lord Snooks gave his son a liberal allowance or in 18th-century epitaphs praising the liberality of some squire who was probably both charitable and a crusted Tory.

In politics, liberal came to the fore in the 19th century with Britain’s faintly progressive Liberal Party (though in mainland Europe equivalent words acquired a quite different sense, that of freedom from the Catholic Church: parties like Italy’s 20th-century Partito Liberale, for instance, were secular but usually far from unprogressive, to the mystification of the many Britons who knew nothing of politics east of the English Channel).

Then came the meanings that we all know. Or do we?— they’ve been stood on their heads in the past 50 years. When I was young, in Britain a political liberal was somewhere on the left: progressive (anti-colonialist, eg), vaguely egalitarian (eg, over redistributive taxation) and often in favour of vigorous government meddling to ensure these aims. To Americans, in contrast, a liberal — though the word was not much used — was devoted to the free market and general freedom from government.

Funny thing

Today those rival meanings have crossed the Atlantic, in both directions. To some Britons, liberal still has its old sense. To others, influenced no doubt by my old employer, The Economist, the Bible-cum-Quran of free-marketry, it implies just that. And, as in India, that is becoming the dominant meaning.

In contrast, most Americans have come wholeheartedly to accept the former British sense. Wholeheartedly but (unlike my generation) hostilely. To them, a liberal is open-minded; on religion, say. Yuk. He believes America should look after its poorer citizens, and at the expense of richer ones. Softie. He thinks lesser countries have a right to their own views. Weakling, send in the Marines. He might not even be ready to “obliterate” Iran in defence of Israel, as supposedly liberal Hillary Clinton would. The once hurrah-word of thinking free-marketeers has become the boo-word of their least-thoughtful supporters.

The shift symbolizes the linguistic power of the media. On redneck Fox television, liberal is a standard word of abuse. But not only there: many respected and middle-of-the-road American newspapers publish columnists of strident right-wingery, ferocious bias often on the edge of sheer dishonesty, and almost straight anti-Arab racism when Israel is the issue. For them too, liberal is a hatchet word.

Yet the same columnists probably think of themselves as libertarians. Just as I do, a liberal of the sort they detest. It’s a funny thing, language, and no amount of disapproval from folks like me can stop the media altering it.