Have some buzzwords that cause you to roll your eyes when somebody says them? I’m sure that everyone has words and phrases that they find running the gamut from mildly amusing to the wildly preposterous. Often it’s just the overuse of some words and phrases that cause our blood pressure to spike. Here are some that have embedded themselves in the verbal culture, and it’s going to take some time and effort to snuff them out going forward.
OK, now that’s one of them. “Playing it forward”, “forward-looking”, “paying it forward”, and any phrases that use or misuse “forward” should be axed. What actually is “playing it forward”? Some people think of this as extending some gesture of kindness. Great. Just say, “now you keep doing that.” There are charitable foundations that have taken up the phrase, raising money for sports and athletes, for musical endeavors, games and something called Sneaky Cards – don’t know what that is. All I know is that I’m way too old to play anything forward beyond tomorrow’s lunch. Fashion people use phrases like “fashion-forward” and “forward-looking” to mean, as I understand it, new and cutting edge. In that case, maybe the only true “fashion-forward” look is the Star Trek jumpsuit with some brightly colored insignia on the front. Everyone from the future seems to be end up in them, even the Star Wars humans, who add capes to set them apart. But wait, didn’t all the characters in Game of Thrones have capes too? New concept, everyone. “Fashion-Backwards”. I like it.
Speaking of “cutting edge”, who came up with that one? I suppose one could argue thatMary, Queen of Scots, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and Anne Boleyn were all cutting edge. At least they ended up that way. But when you think about it, is something “on the cutting edge” really bold and innovative, or just badly gashed? Film editors refer to “cutting edge”, which translates into some scene that ends up on the cutting room floor – it didn’t work. Whenever someone uses that trendy phrase, I have a mental picture of a large paper cutter, lopping off excess. Hack something in two– now there’s “cutting edge”.
You see, “that’s what I’m talking about”. No, you don’t, because that’s a trite phrase used endlessly, generally by someone that was misunderstood the first time. It doesn’t generally refer to anything in particular except that the person using it is vaguely enthusiastic. These same people tend to bounce from one random thought to another, making it impossible to “know what they’re talking about.”
When did owners of animals become “pet parents”? Is this a term foisted on us by pet stores and the pet food people. It certainly seems that commercials for doggie treats have been getting out-of-hand, implying that if you’re giving your pet something with bone meal in it, you’re just minutes away from a visit by the animal control officer. One lady in a commercial actually said, and I’m not making this up, that she is a stay-at-home mom, but with two children, she shops online because her schedule is “hectic”. Really? You fail the “pet parent test” if you don’t have time to pick up a sack of chow mix at the grocery store. I know that people love and take care of their pets, but really, unless a mother out there has given birth to a golden retriever, are you really their parent? Do you have savings bonds put away for Kitty College? Some people now have medical insurance for their pets, because doggy health care has become so expensive. Maybe Mitch McConnell and his Senate colleagues ought to take a swing at pet care before trying to deal with human health care. There are any number of folks in Washington that rightfully should to be put down, but that’s fodder for another column. Remember when a car that didn’t just roll of the assembly line was “used”? That was apparently too negative for the ad people, so, voila – “pre-owned”. Means someone, maybe several, owned it before you. Actually, if we’re totally literal, “pre-owned” means before it was a car – it was just bits and pieces at a Ford plant in Mexico. That’s truly pre-owned.
Some of us are old enough to remember when “breaking news” meant a major event – a war breaking out, a large plane crash, Congress in agreement or making a decision – something that was really worth our national attention. It was often preceded by the announcement, “we interrupt this broadcast for this special report.” Now, every news story seems to be “breaking news”. This runs the gamut of national and regional interest. A car off the road in the town next door. A moose running through a neighborhood in some suburban community. A house fire in another, but the cat, thank heaven was rescued. The interviewed pet parent is in tears. Is this really the kind of thing that constitutes “breaking”? It’s barely worthy of broadcast time. Now that we have “fake news”, let’s invent a new category – “marginally news”. Of course, before we see the moose, there’s a moving graphic, “BREAKING NEWS!” coming at us like a locomotive. I should add here that the correspondents on location really need to stop interviewing the neighbors and passersby. Only one in roughly twelve should ever, ever, be seen or heard on camera. They often didn’t know the victim(s) except to wave while putting out the trash, and became aware of the incident because they looked out a window, smelled smoke, or heard a “boom’. Thus, they’re in a total fog as to how the fire/stand-off/explosion/robbery/dump-truck-in-the-living-room could have happened in their quiet neighborhood.
It’s a safe bet that whoever coined the phrase, “no brainer” was speaking from personal experience. It typically connotes little to no thought is needed or given. Perhaps we can agree to use “no brainer” in its correct context – someone that usually fails to get the big picture, had a lobotomy, or perhaps has had an unfriendly encounter with a guillotine. (The French Royal Family again comes to mind here.) Another term that I somehow find irritating, though it is a perfectly good word, is “stakeholder”. Does the person holding the stake have some proprietary rights? Often used to imply an inclusive, expanded community of concerned people, my mind’s eye instead sees a barbarian wrapped in animal pelts holding a large spear in one hand and a dead beaver in the other. Now, that stakeholder knows how to work it.
“Literally” is a word whose meaning has been, well, literally corrupted. When I was studying English, back in the epoch of ink-stained hands and parchment, the term meant exactly or without exaggeration. Now, however, literally everyone on the planet is using it randomly sprinkled into conversation to stress a point, to enhance their narrative, or to highlight parts of their journey. This is a test – how many annoying terms are in that last sentence? Marco Polo, Lewis and Clark, Magellan – they had real journeys. Geoffrey Chaucer and Ernest Hemmingway could legitimately lay claim to narratives. Of the seven billion plus inhabitants of this world, maybe a few hundred have had a true “journey”, and even fewer should bother writing about them. The rest of us mosey through life with possible glimpses of greatness, moments of satisfaction, a sprinkling of potholes, speed bumps, and detours. Most people in the world live in well-deserved obscurity. They have fully earned the right not to tell us about it. We don’t need them to “tell their stories”. In fact, many shouldn’t even have internet access, let alone a global audience. They need to leave all that “sharing” to those of us that are truly insightful and delightfully entertaining.
We teachers have come up with our fair share of confusing, irritating, and provocative jargon. Let’s start by referring to what we do as “pedagogy.” The theoretical art of teaching. (Sidebar: anything with “gogy” in it makes me giggle.) Couldn’t just call it “teaching”. Of course not, that’s too simple. To give credit where credit is due, much of the lunacy in educational verbiage comes from colleges, consultants, and those selling books. Mid-terms weren’t quite professional enough, so voila, “interim assessments”. Really? Couldn’t just say, “want to see how kids are doing along the way”, but noooooooo. “Anchor Standards” and “benchmarks” are the really, really important ideas we should be carving into park benches, right? Or maybe we could attach fifth grade test results to the price of crude oil and the Dow Jones average. “In BREAKING NEWS today, grade 10 algebra scores edged up an eighth of a point to 3x squared, showing gains in the Pythagorean Theorem, while US history is rebounding from a two-year slump in the Industrial Revolution. The Civil War and the Westward Expansion are gaining momentum going into the third quarter.” I know, that could be “politically incorrect”. Now there’s a redundant phrase. If it’s political, not a huge leap to “probably wrong”. At some point, almost anything that humans have devised for political purposes pretty much stand in opposition to common sense or the collective good. The moment I hear someone say, “it’s a political issue”, that typically means that logic and reason have flown the coop.
Now I should revise my vision”, so I can update my “mission statement.” All of this lamentation about the human condition (I mean, literally, is that a thing?) has moved my narrative well away from the cutting edge, so I’ll just leave it to my fellow bloggers to play it forward. Now, you see, that’s what I’m talking about.
I'm Thinking...No! 