BBC Should you doubt the distorting influence of The Thick of It in British political culture, consider the word “febrile”. Rich in linguistic provenance, and straightforwardly fun to say, it arrived to us almost intact from the Medieval Latin for “fever”, and meant basically the same thing. Though I can’t see it got much exercise – I know doctors used to be posher than they are now, but I can’t imagine anyone tossing “febrile” around an A&E ward on a Saturday night.  That all changed on 28 November 2009, when this dishonoured little mot had the misfortune to appear in dialogues of Malcolm Tucker. “The situation’s fucking febrile.” Now the Westminster equivalent of some two-bit soapstar, doubling appearances in Doctors and The Bill , it appears several times a week, everywhere from petit-bourgeois broadsheets to commentary columns to newsletter round-robins. Start looking, and you’ll see it everywhere.  This ubiquity is ironic on multiple levels.…