Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesSure, I've made some bad word choices in 2008.
What can I say? I am just an imperfect writer describing a perfect storm. More on that later. How's that for telegraphed foreshadowing?
But a new year is all about moving on. And thanks to the ever-helpful NCEW listserv, I have a list of never-again words for 2009.
"Game changer"? Only if you're writing about a kid who has graduated from Hungry, Hungry Hippos to Scrabble.
And, as long as we're being all competitive, how about "win-win situation"? Sorry, pal, you lose.
Some words, to torture a sports metaphor, are perfectly fine words playing out of position. They are nouns forced to act like verbs: impacted, tasked. And, of course, gifting. "First, we kill all the lawyers, who are responsible for this phrase," writes Naomi Schalit of the Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel in Augusta, Maine. "'Gifting' is a legal term that has infiltrated everyday life with ugly results"
No good comes from putting lipstick on a noun and parading it about as a verb. J.R. Labbe of the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram describes a former boss who would promise to "calendar" a meeting for next week. That would probably be enough to make me want to paperweight myself upside the head.
Words can do that. Consider the durably cloying "at the end of the day." Whether it's a tribute to the power of procrastination, or a monument to unneeded verbiage, let's call it a day.
Then there is "monies." Annoying? You betcha. But just to play devil's advocate, perhaps it is a word we shouldn't so casually discard. We're in a recession, people; who among us can afford to fritter away monies? Especially when we can throw monies at so many problems?
Needless to say, the economy that has plundered our 401(k) accounts has been no easier on our vocabulary. "Rightsizing," its no-less-evil twin "downsizing," and "meltdown"--a word that had passed its prime even before the credit and stock-market you-know-what.
And then there's "Wall Street vs. Main Street." 0h, how steep and precipitous the fall from catchphrase to cliche. We can only hope the recession proves to be as short-lived as this overused turn of phrase.
Otherwise, another "perfect storm" could be brewing.
And to think this started out as a decent enough book and movie. Now it has grown into a perfectly wretched phrase that lingers like the smoky air that clings to my beloved Boise Foothills during a midwinter temperature inversion.
Others have tried to kill it. The word watchers at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, tried to banish "the perfect storm" in 2008.
To no avail. This phrase still is carelessly attached to nearly any storm (or weather-unrelated set of bad circumstances) under the blue sky. And what constitutes an imperfect storm?
Not every storm is perfect. Even above Lake Wobegon. Our society needs to relieve bad weather and bad fortune of this unfair burden--at, of course, the end of the day.
Kevin Richert is editorial page editor of the Idaho Statesman in Boise. Email address is krichert@idahostatesman.com
FEED