September 2003
Pet Peeves
by Robert C. Cumbow
This issue, I have a grab-bag of pet peeves—annoying little misuses that every day remind us how easily the richness and precision of our language can be eroded into meaninglessness.
1. That Is, For Example
No one ever seems to get confused about when to use "etc." or what it means (though it is, alarmingly, sometimes misrendered "ect."). But two other simple Latin abbreviations seem to get confused all the time, and they're not really that difficult to keep straight. I refer, of course, to our friends "i.e." and "e.g." The one that means "that is" is "i.e."—an abbreviation for the Latin "id est," which literally means "that is." It is used to introduce an explanation, definition, or clarification of what one has just said. Example: "Sherry is a partner at her firm; i.e., she is an owner of the firm."
By contrast, the abbreviation "e.g." stands for "exempli gratia," a Latin phrase meaning "for the sake of example" or "by way of example"; thus "e.g." means "for example," and is used when introducing an open-ended list of one or more specific illustrations of what you have just said. Example: "Sherry is experienced in several areas of law, e.g., tax, estate planning, and business-entity formation." I had a sophomore high-school English teacher who used to pun on the "gratia" portion of "exempli gratia" by mock-translating the phrase as "no charge for these examples." Sadly, I think high-school English teachers like that are now as gone as the study of Latin.
2. Slaughtered Sayings
It's nice to liven up your rhetoric with colorful expressions, but it's so much better if you use them properly. Many people use the term "lion's share" to mean the biggest share or the first choice; very few who use this term understand that the "lion's share" of something traditionally means all of it—or at least all of it that's worth having. When the lion is finished, there's still a little left for the hyena. But if you and I are dividing something 70-30, it's not correct to say that you are getting the lion's share.
Another much-abused term is "Hobson's choice," which most speakers and writers who use it seem to think means a difficult choice or a tough decision. When someone is in a tricky situation, we might say that person is on the horns of a dilemma—either choice has undesirable consequences—but it is not correct to say he faces a Hobson's choice. Thomas Hobson operated a livery stable in 16th-17th century England. ("Livery" comes from the French verb livrer, to "deliver," and is not, as is widely believed, a reference to livestock.) It was Hobson's custom to require that each customer take only the horse nearest the door. Thus a Hobson's choice is not a tough choice; it's no choice at all. An excellent example of a Hobson's choice is the legendary—and probably apocryphal—story that Henry Ford's stated policy regarding his Model T automobiles was that customers could buy the cars in any color they wanted, "as long as it's black."
Another widely misunderstood term that seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and nearly always wrongly, is "track record." It's odd that this term should be so commonly misused, since it's not difficult to understand at all. It comes from horse racing, and it refers to the best performance in a particular event at a particular racetrack. Thus you might ask at Emerald Downs, "What's the track record for the four-and-a-half furlong?" meaning the best time in which any horse has ever run that distance at that track. (For the answer, and other Emerald Downs track records, see www.emdowns.com/default.asp?cat=6&id=139.) People who use the term "track record" simply to refer to a particular person's or organization's past performance betray the fact that they don't know much about either horse racing or their own language.
And can anybody tell me why so many speakers and writers have started using "step up to the plate" as if it meant "take responsibility for past mistakes" rather than "get ready to perform"?
3. Fractured Foreignisms
Similarly, it doesn't help your image or your rhetoric to use foreign words if you don't do it correctly. When the U.S. Army was looking for stored weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a few weeks back, it was common to hear military authorities pronounce the word "cache" as "kashay." That may have been the U.S. military's way of getting back at the French for criticizing the U.S. posture on Iraq; but it seems more likely that the speakers just didn't know any better. (By the way, there is a French word "cachet," but it has an entirely different meaning.)
Sadly, in the United States today, it often doesn't make you look like an idiot to mispronounce foreign words, because everyone mispronounces them. People who know even a little about French should know that "lingerie" is not pronounced "lawn-zheray," but most Americans continue to embarrass themselves and the rest of us by insisting on that pronunciation. Somehow, a lot of us seem to think that using an "-ay" sound at the end of a French word, even if it's dead wrong, makes us sound high-class. (If you like, you can pronounce that last compound word HOY-class, with a Joisey accent.)
Some fractured French has been around so long it's become thoroughly embedded into American English. There's really no such thing as a "chaise lounge," for example. The term is "chaise longue," and it's French for "long chair." But the battle's long since lost on that one.
In addition to mispronouncing foreign words, Americans also have a way of using them incorrectly—trying to make themselves sound smart but betraying the fact that they don't actually understand the meaning of what they're saying. For example, most people who use the Greek phrase "hoi polloi" ("the people," in the sense of "common folks") precede it with the word "the." But "hoi" means "the," making a second "the" redundant. A similar usage is the even more common "please RSVP"—which announces that its user has no idea that the "SVP" portion of the phrase is an abbreviation for "please" in French.
4. Back-Formations
Back-formations are new words that are formed as a result of an initial misunderstanding of the origin or meaning of an existing word. These can be useful and enrich the language.
The now commonly accepted English verb "edit" is a back-formation from the word "editor," a Latin noun for "publisher" first used in English in 1649 for one who oversees the preparation of materials for publication. The verb "edit" came much later, coined in 1791 to mean "what an editor does," and it was a useful addition to the language because, before that, there wasn't a single word that stood for an editor's activities.
A little less enriching is the back-formation "hardball," which, once colorful, has become an annoying cliché. The word "hardball" is a back-formation from "softball," a variant version of baseball. Somewhere along the line, someone assumed that if softball was played with a softball, then baseball—presumably the "real thing" and not just an easier imitation—must be played with a hardball, and thus people began to speak of "playing hardball" to mean "getting serious." This is a misnomer in more ways than one, because not only is there no such game as "hardball," and no kind of ball called a "hardball," but also the game of softball, properly played, is no easier or more lightweight than baseball. Just maybe a little less dangerous.
But although back-formations can make the language more colorful, they can also create cloying, annoying effects. The neologism "mentee" for one who receives the benefits of a mentor is one of the more obnoxious back-formations of the last couple of decades. A "mentor" is not someone who "ments," and we don't need the word "mentee" for someone who is taken under the wing of a mentor. If you need a word for that, "protégé" will do nicely.
Because in English we frequently add "er" or "or" to a verb to create a noun for the doer of the action, many speakers of English incorrectly assume that any noun ending in "er" or "or" indicates that the root preceding it is a verb form. That's how, through a two-step process of misunderstanding, we get words like "mentee." But although an actor is one who acts, and an editor is now one who edits, a mentor doesn't ment, a laser doesn't lase, a rector doesn't rect, a lector doesn't lect, a motor doesn't mot, and a rotor doesn't rot (at least not if it's properly cared for).
5. Doublespeak and Nospeak
George Orwell in 1984 coined the term "newspeak" for a government's deceptive use of words and phrases to hide truth. The word "doublespeak" refers to a use (usually by a politician) of words that mean one thing to signify another—e.g., "Homeland Security Act" or "I did not have sex with that woman."
I use the term "nospeak" for coinages in which people think they're adding meaning when in fact they are subtracting it. For example, the growing use over the past decade of the term "content" suggests a verbal and cultural bankruptcy. The word "content" might be appropriately used in the limited context of contrasting something meaningful with mere form or style. But frequent references to "website content" and "content developers" imply that online communication is driven first by the need to have a web presence and only secondarily by the need to have something useful to say. Of course, I suppose that all too often that is truly the case. For what we now call "content" we used to use such words as "art," "entertainment," "information," "humor," "comment," "education," "literature," "news," and many others. I don't know anyone who went to college to major in "content," and I don't like that word used to lump into some amorphous mass the creative work of good people.
Another recent coinage that is driving me crazy is "identity theft." Theft is what occurs when someone steals your property, i.e., takes it away from you. When a car theft occurs, the car's rightful owner no longer has the car; the thief does. If you were truly a victim of identity theft, neither you nor anyone else would know who you were. This side of science fiction, there is no such thing as identity "theft." There is a perfectly good word for what happens when someone who is not you pretends to be you. That word is "infringement." When someone copies an author's original work without permission, the copier isn't stealing the work from the author, because the author still has the work and his rights in it, even after the act has occurred. That's why we say the copyright has been "infringed," not "stolen." The same thing is true when your identity is mimicked by someone else. Maybe your credit cards and your money have been stolen, but your identity hasn't been—it's been infringed.
And while we're on the subject, one of my biggest pet peeves is hearing people use the terms "copyright" and "trademark" as verbs. The word "copyright" is a noun referring to the group of rights an author owns in an original work he has created and fixed in a tangible medium. You can register a copyright, but there is no such thing as "copyrighting" a work. The copyright exists when the work is created. There is also no such thing as "trademarking" a name. The word "trademark" may be used as a verb when one speaks of "trademarked goods," in the sense of putting one's trademark on the goods (or "branding"). But one doesn't "trademark" a name. One chooses a name and uses it as a trademark, and by virtue of that use one acquires trademark rights. You can register your trademark, but it's redundant to say you are "trademarking" it.
As a matter of fact, too many people don't even understand the difference between "copyright" and "trademark." But now we are getting to things that peeve me because of my area of law practice. So I'd better sign off before I get accused of becoming esoteric. Got any pet language peeves of your own? Send them in and we'll look at them in a future column. Meanwhile . . . watch your tongue.
Robert C. Cumbow is a shareholder with Graham & Dunn, Seattle, where he counsels clients in beverage, food, communications, entertainment, and other businesses on trademark, copyright, advertising, and media law. He teaches at Seattle University Law School and has written widely on law, film, food, and language.
Back to table of contents >>
