Junk Phrases

Perhaps I read too much, and listen to too many radio programs. But I am distressed by the cliches that show up and the fashionable but empty-headed words that are often used. Here are a few of the offenders.

Architecting: Sure, we can all guess what this means...but is it really necessary to have this word? Designing isn't good enough? Building won't do? I ran across this word toad in the title of a book:
Architecting Web Services,
by William Oellermann

Arguably: The fashionable word arguably apparently doesn't mean anything, except that a speaker is pausing for a mental breath while letting the mouth run on. The effect of the word is to weaken the statement; it suggests that the speaker isn't sure enough to speak plainly, and so hides behind the idea that someone else has already put forth this claim, or that the speaker could think of a few arguments that would support it.
Fred is arguably the greatest musician of all time.
actually suggests
Fred might be one of the greater musician of many times, but I don't want to argue with you about it.

Bizarrely, the opposite of "arguably" means almost the same thing, in that it intends to shore up the statement. However, instead of suggesting "it could be argued that", it seems to be saying "it's so obvious that even you couldn't deny this." I have seen the word "inarguably" show up, meaning "I'm so sure of this statement that I won't even consider contrary evidence." And yet, on the face of it, "Fred is inarguably the greatest musician of all times" is only slightly more intense than when the word "arguably" is used.

By Definition: There should be a licensing requirement phrases that attract the mindless word slingers. "By definition" means just that, and is used, thoughtfully and judiciously, by mathematicians, who take great pains to describe sensible definitions of things, and then argue the implications of those definitions. If a circle is defined to be the set of points in the plane that are all a given distance from a given point, then a circle is "by definition" a set of points. That is, you can see immediately from the definition that one thing for sure about a circle is that it must be a set of points. It's not "by definition" round. It's not a lot of things, by definition. The properties we like to think of in reference to a circle must be derived from its definition. But the ignorant think that "by definition" just means I really mean this, or this is so obvious. So that's why you open up the ever more disappointing Discover magazine for May 2002 to find
Darts fired from an air pistol are, by definition, non-sterile.
WRONG! YOU LOSE!

Celebrate: In these days, every child gets a star. Every action, and its equal and opposite inaction, is worthy of being "celebrated". If this is your idea of a party, don't invite me! There's even a Disney-manufactured town in Florida called "Celebration"!.

This from an article in May 1993 Scientific American:
Given that the usefulness of maps derives from their bias and subjectivity, these are qualities to be highlighted and celebrated."

Leave aside the wretched construction of this sentence, which occurs in the final paragraph of the article, where it presumably had been placed as a special delight for the reader. Ignore the cheap and tendentious assertion that maps (just like all other authority) are biased and subjective. Consider, instead, what the author is urging us to do as he hurries to finish his article so he can reference it in his resume. We are to highlight and celebrate the bias and subjectivity of maps, because even these bad things are... well, worth celebrating anyway. Well, hurray I guess.

closure
: A bill was introduced into the Virginia Senate to allow relatives of murdered people to watch executions. The justification was that this would "allow them to reach a kind of closure".

One remark I have is that, formally, this stupid phrase is simply another way of saying "they'll get to see that the bastard is dead, so it's over." So in part, I despise this phrase for being a perversion of English into thoughtless babble.

But what's worse is that the use of this phrase creates a psychological need for closure. It solicits from the listener the belief that a "need for closure" is a legitimate justification for various irrational demands. The Vietnam veterans never got a parade, and so the Washington memorial "provided closure." [If that were true, then how come they keep going back, over and over, and can't stop talking about the war? Would a bigger monument help?]

Excuse me. I have to go bring the door to closure.

Cocktail: This is a word I've seen over and over again in newspapers and expecially DISCOVER magazine. It's supposed to be an exciting variation of the word "mixture" or "brew". The excitement comes from the fact that a cocktail has alcohol in it. Whoopy! You just have to get annoyed, though, when a mixture of medicines to induce death, or to get addicts off of heroin, or to reduce pain, or to stimulate the production of eggs, has to be termed a cocktail. Why not "a smelly, oily liquid of unnatural color"? No? Well then how about "an aperitif"? The previous "sexy" word for mixture was "soup", as in "The origin of life was in a complex soup of raw chemicals." Of course, if "soup" is too tired, and "cocktail" is inappropriate, we can just call it a "witch's brew". Oops, that's a little too colorful nowadays!

Commentates: A backformation from "commentator". I hold in my hands a TV listing which proclaims "Scott Hamilton commentates on the 2002 Winter Olympic Games". Surely no further commentation is necessarious.

Deconstructing: is a two dollar word for "analyzing" (for which it is nearly cognate) but generally is used to mean "nitpicking analysis performed to mock or ridicule." But it all sounds so much grander in French. Let it stay there.

Grow: as in "Grow the economy", sounds like it comes from the vocabulary of the same people who dreamed up "birthing" a baby. It doesn't happy me to hear this.

Key: "***** is key" is a phrase I cannot get used to. I understand that once you allow "key" to be an adjective in front of a noun, it can go off on its own and show up anywhere. I can tolerate "a key assumption", but "This assumption is key." sets my teeth on edge.

Keyest
: I've already ranted about how "key" has become a general purpose adjective. I don't mind "a key employee", but when the phrase becomes "that employee is key" my teeth begin to gnash automatically. My fears have been compounded, now that I have heard someone on the radio talking about "the keyest part of my work". I warned you, but you did nonthing! Next, of course, we are going to be treated to descriptions of things that are "keyer" than others, and then we can start behaving in a "keyly" fashion.

NOT: is irony for the irony-deaf.

Paradigm: is too obvious an offender to complain about. Thomas Kuhn bears heavy responsibility for writing a thinly thought-out book that brought us paradigms and paradigm-shifts and the knick-knack-paddywack dogma that the primary motif in the history of human thought, including science, is the distortion of facts to fit the current ideology.

Parameters: I can't believe that people persist in using the word "parameters" as though it meant "limits". I don't accept the explanation that they think they're saying "perimeters" either. For one thing, an object only has one perimeter.

Potentially: is used as though it meant "nearly". In this role, it's simply a weakening, filler word used by people who don't want to be held to what they say, and want to sound cautious and careful. "He's a potential killer" might be a reasonable thing to say. However, next we see "This is a potential danger". But that's wrong. A danger is a danger, plain and simple. A potential danger is something that isn't dangerous, but has the potential to be so. But I guess people are afraid to commit themselves to anything, and it's not uncommon to hear people saying things like "scientists warn that there could be a risk of a potential hazard..." Isn't this four orders of magnitude away from something real?

Preventative: A preventative measure results, presumably, in the preventation of something. Say that once or twice, and then tell me that "preventative" is a word. I would like to carry out the preventative societal confistication of such mutant words, irregardless. And thanks to Kirk Nelson for correcting me, after I had "corrected" his resume to indicate that he wanted to work in "preventative medicine".

Process: There's a "peace process", a "grief process", a "healing process", which all sound like they come with a technical manual. Somehow, the Israelis and Palestinians can have a "peace process" while they throw rocks at each other, shoot each other, call each other names. Since we all go through the "aging process", I await a best seller called "Process Your Aging!".

Pushing the envelope: Sometimes a phrase comes into style suddenly, and you hear everyone using it, and it sounds fresh and new. It's only a few years later, when an empty-headed radio columnist is trying to "bring his story to closure" by mouthing a suitably earnest formula, that you can get a good laugh and realize there was nothing special about the phrase after all, and nobody really understood what it meant.

There I was again, listening to NPR, when a jazz musician was described as "pushing the envelope to its limits". That sounds like a noble thing to do, I suppose, except that the envelope IS the limits. Unless you are a mathematician, you are not allowed to think of the envelope of all envelopes!

Reinventing

Rite of passage: Certain books seem to exist not to be read, but merely to display a catchy title that can jump into popular circulation. I think of "The Greening of America", for instance, a book title which instantly became a useful substitute for thought across the country. Now "rite of passage" comes flying out of someone's mouth when they simply mean "a socially important moment". I can't quite see the point in this business of rites, anyway.

shocked...shocked: People learn to speak by imitation and repetition. After they master "wawa" and the more useful nouns and phrases, they begin learning cliches and stock phrases. Every adolescent already knows the "joke" that people say they read Playboy for the articles. I suppose they have to wait til college to start hearing, over and over, this phrase from Casablanca. But it's not clever any more, it's just tedious, and betrays a lazy speaker.

Societal: I suppose there are occasions when the adjective "social" has already acquired a special sense, so that it might be useful to have a second form of the word. For instance, it might be handy to have the phrase societal disease available as long as social disease means something nasty. But instead, I think societal is used for the same reason that preventative is: it's longer, has a nice rhythm and is clearly only meant to apply to abstract society, not to the small incidental groupings of a few individuals. And for these reasons, we're stuck with societal goals, societal needs, societal characteristics and all the other ill-gotten phrases.

Speaks to: When did some dyslinguist begin saying that something "speaks to" when they meant "speaks about"? "This book speaks to his ability to turn a company around," for instance. Does it just sound more eddi-kated? Is it just an unconscious fad?

Take a decision, Take a meeting: Where I come from, we make a decision, and we attend a meeting. I am not surprised to hear business people regurgitating their common jargon, but I am startled to hear the "take a decision" phrase occur commonly on BBC broadcasts.

Too little, too late: was a catchy phrase for a moment, but did this elaborate form of "no" have to become a conversational filler? Presumably what is meant is "too little OR too late". The phrase sounds more damning than, say, simply "too little", perhaps because it complains twice. But if you're not going to accept an offer that's too little, then it's gratuitous to add that you're not going to accept it because it's too late.

Travesty: "It's a travesty!" people cry out, when they think they've been wronged. A travesty of what? A travesty is a grotesque imitation, but it's an imitation OF SOMETHING. It's correct to say "It's a travesty of justice." I happen to be sick of the word "travesty" anyway, but I wish people would use it properly.

Vibrant: A vibrant community, a vibrant child, a vibrant social life...could you actually describe what it means to be vibrant? Perhaps you could associate some adjectives, such as "active, fresh, lively, not boring, ...", but those are only loose synonyms. What does "vibrant" really mean? Where did "vibrant" come from, and who needs it? Is anything describable as unvibrant? (Please don't start throwing that word around now, too!)

What did Charlie Brown know and when did he know it?: has become the knee-jerk phrase of people who imagine they are pulling off a major investigation. It is, apparently, the goal of every tinhorn congressman to be featured on the television news broadcast repeating this phrase. Perhaps it made some sense to ask this question repeatedly about Richard Nixon, since the case depended on whether Nixon had foreknowledge of the break-in, and whether he knew certain facts before or after he made certain statements. But no one recalls that context now. They just bellow out the question ominously when browbeating a second-rate pill salesman.

It's the repetition, stupid!: Reporters have to turn out a certain number of buckets of prose every day, and it's hard to be creative every day. But it's also hard to write prose knowing you're being bland and boring. So journalists are drawn to catchphrases that make them sound current, clever and witty. TIME magazine has been doing this for years, especially in its article titles. Frequently, you can't figure out what the article is about from the title, because the author is so busy showing off. A new phrase that has entered the journalist's tiny mind (one hopes this has allowed some other, tired phrase to finally rest in peace) is derived from James Carville's sign "It's the Economy, Stupid!" which was supposed to remind him of where to keep his focus. Sadly, he has ruined many a news article for me, because of the compulsive phrase jabbering of press monkeys.

A Thousand Points of Light: Now that George Bush has gone, we are left with a few phrases that will (one hopes) quickly shuffle off the stage to be heard no more. These include "a thousand points of light", and "kinder, gentler", two phrases that were quickly rattled off by any incompetent Bush impersonator, and that insinuated themselves into newspaper-speak.

One can't be too hopeful, however. Ninny news writers still cannot break themselves from Reagan phrases like "evil empire" and "trickle down".

In recovery, in denial: apparently seem deeper, perhaps more scientific than "recovering" or "denying", perhaps because you can leave out the rest of the phrase; recovering from what? Denying what? We aren't told, so I guess we have to be in the know.

Problematic

Isn't clear

Back to the wordplay page.

Last revised on 28 March 2002.