What started this ridiculous craze for saying "train station" instead of "railway station"?

@spjennifer What is the logic behind the phrase "parking lot"? I've known of its existence for decades but why "lot"? That's the part I have never understood. I wouldn't call it infantile but I would certainly call it odd.

@spjennifer Britons do use the word "lawyer" but as a general one not a specific title, to cover solicitors, magistrates, barristers and judges. (Barristers are the examiners in Crown Court trials overseen by judges.)

For no convincing, or even much-known, reason, the UK Government several years ago changed the name of the country's top-line appeals-panel from "The Law Lords" to the "Supreme Court". It is concerned with the case's underlying law more than the specific case.

"Mercantile" ? Yes - but probably limited to legal and commercial use.

"Troubadour"? Yes, in talking about music and musicians from their era.

"Morrow"? No, that has long-gone from everyday speech but would of course still exist in old literature; or in speech in a modern work set in a past era. I think "morrow" was always prefixed with "on the", but now we would say, "tomorrow".

We use "yard" (of ground) differently too.

A yard here is generally a paved area, typically at the rear of a house, or part of a farm or factory premises. A cultivated area attached to a house, possibly with an intervening yard, is a "garden", not a "yard". A home's private parking area is its "drive" - I don't know what it is called in America.

Oh, and our schools do not have "yards". They have "playgrounds".

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Irrespective of transAtlantic linguistics though, NankerPhelge's charge of infantilism does have merit, for many areas of life are being dragged down into low levels of literacy, attention and intellect; childishness and mediocrity in the vague pursuits of woolly "accessibility" and "exciting experiences". (How can an ostentatious block of flats, a supermarket or a "drive-thru" chip-shop [sic - the British abbreviation is "thro' "] possibly offer an "exciting experience"?)

The Oxford English Dictionary has expunged nature-related words like common plant names, from its children's edition. Its feeble excuse? To make space for IT-related words. No thought of needing both vocabularies - a terrible dis-service to children, just to save a few pages.

A particular example is in many of our museums and similar, where shallow labels, "gee-whizzery" and so-called "interactive displays" rather than proper information, are now part of the so-called "experience". Of course they need attract the interest of lay visitors, including children; but being patronising fails grown-ups with any higher specific or general interest in the subjects displayed, and their contexts.

Two examples from personal visits are the "visitor-centre" at the Bernard Lovell Telescope ("Jodrell Bank"); and most notoriously and unforgivingly, the wilful destruction by the National Railway Museum of its vital, fully-functioning engineering workshop. The latter was allegedly at the behest of a new manager reputedly a former nature-reserve manager admitting to having no knowledge of or interest in, railways. The workshop not only maintained the static displays but also main-line steam locomotives, and it had a public viewing gallery allowing visitors to understand better, the practical engineering involved.

Machine-tools in workshops, or dandelions in dictionaries - swept away because we need instancy and "accessibility", must be infantalised and made ignorant, not taught...

@NankerPhelge We call them parking lots because empty properties were called lots, when they were paved over for paid parking, they thus became parking lots.

@ArishMell As an American who was born and raised in Canada, I am often aghast at my countrymen's bastardization of the Queen's English but I am also cognizant of the many foolish rules included in the perfunctory use of English. As a child in school I was prone to ask our Teachers things like; if the plural of mouse is mice, why isn't the plural of house hice? With similar questions as pertained to goose/geese, moose/meese and they were never able to come up with logical answers except to tell me to be quiet and behave lest I warrant a visit to the Principal's discipline parade. What I have noticed from us is a reduction in the unnecessary over-complication of the language for simple words like favour, glamour and neighbour in removing the unnecessary "u" and yes, while we have done this with many words, I can admit that I myself find it difficult to do so. The Internet and chat have further reduced it even more to the point now where emojiis and abbreviations seem to be acceptable and IT words are now in the Oxford Dictionary too. I think old dinosaurs like us will go the way of the dodo as these things have not only become common practice but are even taught in our schools by Millennials who've become Teachers. As Bob Dylan sang, "The times they are a changin'..." and there's not a lot we can do about it...

@spjennifer Why are empty properties called "lots"? If I told someone that the empty property at number 67 is for sale and I said "there's a lot for sale over there", the reply would most probably be "a lot of what?".

@NankerPhelge More than likely it was due to large properties being divided up into smaller "lots" for sale but plot and tract is also used here.