Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry this week promised that Labour would introduce “managed migration” for EU citizens, without actually saying how it would be managed. But this is the prevailing way in which “managed” is employed in modern political rhetoric, as a vague if not outright contradictory assertion of control, as in some Brexiters’ enthusiasm for a “managed no-deal”, or orderly chaos.

From Latin manus, hand, via Italian maneggiare, to handle or manipulate, “to manage” has meant to control since the 16th century, as applied to women, children, and horses. In Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594), it is prophesied that Aeneas will spend three years at war with the Rutiles, and after defeating them waste another three years “mannaging those fierce barbarian mindes”, which is how some UK voters think of their European neighbours.

Given many workers’ experience of management, it’s not clear that “managed migration” is a prospect to thrill even the most resistant. As in much rhetoric around Brexit, “managed migration” is also a subtle untruth, since it implies that entry to the UK is currently completely unmanaged – which it never was, for EU nationals or anyone else.

• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.