OVERUSED

OVERUSED


An Andrew Tirade


“Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law”
-Ferdinand de Saussure


This is a story of words.  Actually, it is much more of an examination than a story.  Regardless of the semantics, I find myself to be unusually hesitant in tackling this little analysis.  This reluctance grows out of my frequent complaint that; the age of electronic media and communication are decimating our language, both written and verbal, turning it into little more than a series of shorthand notations and barely audible grunts.  Before “words” started on their now nearly complete decent into irrelevance, Oratory and Rhetoric were already long dead and fully decayed arts; relic subjects from a long gone age.  In all probability, this current trend is just the next stage of our common language’s progression.  (Or more likely regression.)

So here I sit, willfully working away at a self-acknowledged act of intellectual barbarism.  My sin?  Sounding a rallying call of destruction against the already thinned ranks of our ever-shrinking vocabularies.  However, should my aim be true and my intent be just, then I may be able to play some small roll in the elimination of abused utterances with a nobility of purpose.  This purpose is to bring meaning back to just a few of the words we speak daily and hopefully return a modicum of impact to some of the words that are now so dreadfully overused.

Apparently, the word “apparently” is well on its way to losing a great deal of its apparent meaning and impact.  This started to become apparent in the form of my now ten-year-old son, when he apparently started to preface the majority of his statements with the word apparently.  This overuse would take on a form such as; “Apparently, Minecraft is the most popular computer game in the world, that’s why I like it so much.”  Can’t argue with a kid who has a better handle on this strained adverb than the next most frequent abuser of this word...that’s right, I’m pointing my finger at you CNN.  Go ahead Wolf Blitzer; preface another report with “apparently” one more time, I dare you!

Not the best, but the best we have.  Ugh!

Seriously though, “seriously” has moved away from being another lovely little adverb and has been turned into a freestanding question and more recently, a statement of disbelief all wrapped up in a single term.  This one plays much better with my teenage sons who love to direct it toward me when I bust out an expression that lived, and I should have let die, in the 1980’s.  “Boys, how would you like to go see the new Iron Man movie, I hear it’s totally awesome?” or “ Listen to this guitar riff, didn’t Slash have a radical sound?”  Their answer is always directed at me with a contemptible and disbelieving, under slung stare accompanied by this response; “Dad…seriously?”  It gives me some small comfort to sit back and consider that in a few short decades, their kids will look at them in horror when they as fathers question my grandchildren with their then antiquated and seldom used admonishment of “seriously?”

Heroes and Geniuses were once people and nouns of rare and special stature, which were set apart from the ordinary ranks of humanity.  A hero was a guy like Neil Armstrong, stepping out of the Eagle onto the surface of another world with his timeless proclamation.  Maybe a hero claimed a nearly unsurpassable accomplishment in the world of sports, like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak or in isolated incidents, they were even presidents, like JFK staring down the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  These people were true outliers.  Accomplishing deeds at such a heightened level, as to lie beyond achievement thresholds we set for ourselves, or expect of anyone we have ever known.

Does this flag make my balls look too big?

Today, the title of Hero is bestowed on everyone and anyone employed in a profession with risk potential.  Don’t get me wrong; I respect the helpers of society, the people who leap from ambulances to save a life; the men and women who show up to thwart a robbery or quell a domestic disturbance. Certainly, young people who sign up to serve our nation in the armed forces garner all the respect I can bestow on them, but are these people heroes one and all?  Absolutely not!  Sure their jobs require them to routinely perform heroic acts, but heroic actions especially in the routine of employment, and an individual achieving heroism within the definition of the word, are two very distinctive and different classifications.  Let’s give the real heroes their due and stop automatically assigning the classification of Hero to every uniformed public servant or anyone with a high-risk job.

For the most part, the same can be said of geniuses.  Who is a genius?  Jonas Salk was a genius with regard to medicine and the cure of disease.  Mozart was a genius in terms of music and composition.  Steven Hawking is a genius, with his body paralyzed by ALS, he was still able to work out the physics postulations required to explain Black Holes and practically apply many of Einstein’s theories to the physical universe.  Then there was Einstein…what more needs to be said?  Were he alive today, some persnickety blogger would certainly quip;  “That Einstein was smart… but he was no Einstein.”  The scientist yet to cure cancer is certainly a genius, and maybe someday an American politician will emerge who embodies the traits that will again lead us to believe that genius is an aspect of leadership.  Who is not a genius?  Just about everyone else!

Ben and Gerry came up with a brilliant concoction of frozen, flavorful arterial coagulant and figured out a way to sell it to us in tie-dyed containers for a premium price.  Bright?  Yes.  Genius?  No!  (But I’ll be damned if that Chunky Monkey isn’t one of the best ice creams I ever had.)   Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are and were really, really smart guys.  Did they meet the genius criteria?  Probably not, although I do believe they came about as close as possible.  More appropriate, they should be considered extremely intelligent, smart, talented, and timely innovators, more than anything else.  How about Steven Spielberg?  Sure he makes a good movie and tells wonderful stories, but that hardly makes him a genius.  Don’t even get me started on the past and present “Captain’s of Industry.”  Again, even if you do your job extremely well and experience nearly unrivaled success, a genius this does not make.  So let’s save the Genius and Hero designations for those few truly deserving to wear as a mantle of honor.  The other brave souls serving the world’s needs and breaking ground in new territories of technology, discovery, and innovation would surely be happy to be described as courageous and/or brilliant.  That would be good enough for me, if I had any of those traits to offer the world.

Good job boys, but let's not get carried away. 

Words come and words go.  Some fall into overuse, others are misused and some are just incorrect inventions.  Irregardless, looking back across the evolutionary landscape of language we can see “neat” and “cool” grow into multiple meanings.  The dead ends that were “groovy” and “far out” have left behind innumerable fossils.  The “excellents” and the “awesomes” flowed and now seem to have ebbed while “wicked” retreated into the regional dialect of New England.  One thing is certain; language is ever-changing and always fleeting, especially when it comes to the lifespan of overused words.  WORD!!!