The word issue comes from the Latin word exitus (Italian uscita, French issue), from the supine form exitum of the verb exire, literally “to go out.” Even in Latin, exire and exitus had several meanings; in English, issue has too many.
There are three forms—the substantive (noun), verb transitive, and verb intransitive. We can deal summarily with the verb forms. To issue [something] means to send it out—an edict, stamp, coin, banknote, report, threat, ultimatum; other meanings are obsolete or rare and all reflect the primary meaning. This form has also spawned an indirect passive form (BMJ 2002;325:387), to be issued with [something]—at one time much reviled but now an accepted part of the language. To issue [intransitive] means to go out or (viewed from the other side) to come out; none of the nuanced variations of meaning that issue from this primary meaning is much used today.
However, the substantive poses a serious issue, I mean problem. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) gives 39 separate meanings, listed under seven headings and 16 subheadings. Three extra entries in the second volume of the Additions Series (1993) make it 42. Here is a classification that partly tames the multitude, or at least as many meanings as you need; I omit the obsolete and rare.
The issue actual—The action of exiting, a sortie.
The issue rhetorical—Everything about a discussion or argument (“the whole issue”).
The issue medical—A discharge (“matter,” when purulent, hence my title).
The issue legal—A child, breed, race; proceedings or profits; the point in question (also in the phrases “at issue,” “to take issue [with],” “to make an issue [of]”).
The issue military—Rations, rum, uniform, a revolver.
The issue financial—Bills of exchange, shares, coins, banknotes, stamps.
The issue bibliographical—Newspapers, magazines, journals; an item lent by a library.
The issue political/managerial—And here's where the trouble starts:
The management should deal with this issue [matter]
I intend to reopen the issue [discussion]
Do not confuse the issue [the fundamental question]
Every departmental issue [conflict] has been avoided
We must consider the issues [details] of any plan
We have brought the work to a successful issue [conclusion]
We must debate the managerial issues [principles]
We have enough care issues [questions] to worry about
We have enough bed issues [problems] to worry about
We have enough prescribing issues [errors] to worry about
Does all this create issues [difficulties]?
The managerial use is seductive because the speaker uses the word to mean almost anything, cloaking uncertainty and ambiguity. Harvey Marcovitch (former editor of Archives of Disease in Childhood) tells me that in one case, when atheists objected to a document that contained numerous references that implied God's existence, each instance of the word God was replaced by the phrase “issues surrounding God.” A perfect illustration. Then there is the public relations concept of “issue management,” in which otherwise unacceptable policies are sold to the public by astute advertising or spin.
This is not a new problem. I have adapted many of my examples from What a Word! by A P Herbert, a compilation, first published in 1935, of material that originally appeared in Punch.
This little word cannot bear so many quasi-meanings. As Ernest Gowers succinctly asserted in The Complete Plain Words (1954), “[issue] has a very wide range of proper meanings as a noun, and should not be made to do any more work—the work, for instance, of subject, topic, consideration, and dispute.” Quite so. Expunge it—then we won't have any issues.
We invite readers to contribute their own favourite examples of the (mis)use of “issue” as Rapid responses.