PEEVE REPORT. Often in newpapers PEEVE REPORT. Often
in newpapers I come across word and phrase usage that make me wonder if the
writer and I are speaking entirely different dialects of American English
- that is, words and phrases appear to have entirely different meanings for
them than they do for me. And I ain't talkin' nuance here. For a long
time I've entertained the idea of putting together the "Reverse Newspeak
Dictionary". In the original Newspeak, you remember, language was to be
reduced to as few basic, nuance-free words as possible. In Reverse Newspeak,
words lose their particular sense and mean whatever the writer wishes them
to mean. My favorite contemporary example of this is "smarmy". In the last
5 or 10 years I have rarely, if ever, seen it used in a newspaper such that
it bears any relation to what I mean when use it. As far as I can make out,
it now means "something or somebody icky or offensive to the writer". I
once heard Pat Buchanan described as "smarmy". Now, I do not like the man,
but I have to grant that, whatever his other vices, the man is not smarmy.
That is, not by my understanding of the meaning of "smarmy". I'll admit
that sometimes there is a meaning mismatch between myself and a writer because
I have been walking around for years with an idiosyncratic (i.e. wrong) defintion
in my head. But I do check other people and sources to see if I'm on solid
ground. Such as the time I read of the "unrequited" love shared by Rick
and Ilse. I know words change meaning over time. But they don't change
that fast. Today I came across this puzzling sentence
: "When Susan and Buddy were married in 1966, the war in Vietnam was all
the rage." What was this all about? Some sci-fi story where it's 1966 in
an alternate universe , and the "Vietnam War" is some fashionable divertissement
? No, the article is about the real Vietnam War and the year 1966, in the
universe we know and endure. I can only assume they meant to say "the war
in Vietnam was raging". Now soliciting entries for the Reverse Newspeak
Dictionary. Egregious examples from my own writings accepted. (I'm all
for felicitous neologisms, though. Today's: "grapelicious
", meaning divinely bad purple prose.)

Posted by Moira Breen at January 26, 2002 12:36 PM