Are you waiting for your partner?

Partner.

I don't know what you make of that word.

It seems to have been adopted as the innocuous term to describe someone you are seeing.

Only, well, it's more irritating than innocuous.

No, this is not my partner, I do not have a business operation with them, I am not planning a bank heist and we don't spend our lives dancing either.

Yet those are the images that are brought to mind when I think about the term partner.

It also suggests a kind of never ending boardroom meeting.  

The alternative

Can you not just use their name?

I don't mind if you've forgotten their name, that happens, just use their sodding name.

 I have no idea if husband or fiancée are fraught with the same difficulties, but I would imagine so, because, labels, they're a bit rubbish.

Necessary sometimes, but rubbish.

Then again they do serve as warnings of status: please don't sleep with that one we're married and I'm not a swinger...