Number 7
Working journalists have to put out a lot of copy every day, under pressure, so perhaps they can’t be blamed for taking mental shortcuts and pulling ready-made phrases out of a hat. But I do blame them, especially for reducing an infinitely complex world full of intricately constructed personalities and realities to a few simple verbal icons, like the following:
The word “feisty” irritated me long before I knew why, till someone observed that it’s nearly always used to refer to a person who is old, female, or small. Almost the next day after I read that, I read “feisty” in a newspaper feature ~ applied to an aged Chinese woman, who was probably small, though they didn’t give her dimensions ~ a three-fer! Almost anyone perceived by a writer to be old, who is not comatose, may be called feisty. Normal human activity in the elderly is perceived as extraordinary by the young. There’s nothing wrong with being either old, female, or small, and “feisty” is usually meant as a compliment, but it’s like being compared to a nippy Chihuahua instead of a lion ~ “Gee, you’re cute when you’re mad.” Anyone who’s really mad would rather make someone run than grin and pat her on the head.
And why are independent people always “fiercely” independent? This conjures up a sort of rough-hewn Viking type, wielding an axe, too large and threatening to be feisty. Surely there are other ways to be independent. Sternly independent. Calmly independent. Rationally independent. As independent as can be expected of an essentially dependent, cooperative, social being.
These feisty, fiercely independent people are always at war ~ “battling” cancer, depression, acne; “fighting,” never working, for justice or peace or their rights; “waging wars” against or for zoning laws. (Maybe it’s because they are constantly being “outraged” by things that merely irritate the rest of us.) I mistrust these ubiquitous martial terms. As metaphors, they’re threadbare, they’re imprecise, and I think they have a numbing effect. And what’s left when you have a real shooting war to think and write about?
I suspect these are the same people who have lifestyles, not just lives; maybe they don’t have life substances. Maybe they live in houses built by the developer who told me his houses had a “lifestyle ambience” ~ isn’t that sort of like having an atmosphere of atmosphere, doubly meaningless, a two-fer? What does a lifestyle look like? Does yours look like mine? Any living people who have no lifestyle are probably people who don’t buy and wear whatever trendy items the writer buys and wears. And how did lifestyle get to be one word? I’d like to catch the writer who first did that. I think the point where “life style” became “lifestyle” is exactly the point where the original words lost any real meaning.
People with lifestyles probably have “quality” lives. What kind of quality? Like “style,” the word needs modifying, although “quality” has been used to imply high quality for a long time. The upper classes have been referred to as “the quality,” for instance.
If lifestyle people have cats, maybe they buy litter for “multiple cats,” which I saw in the grocery store the other day. Sounds like litter for cloned kitties. Although “multiple” may be defined as “more than one,” it implies replication: “multiple personalities” doesn’t mean an interesting group of different people. “Multiple” is used more and more lately to mean “several” or “many” for the usual reason ~ it’s longer, with one more syllable and twice as many letters as “many,” and it’s Latinate. (Maybe people have “multiple Os” in mind too, subliminally.)
Which takes us to the way these feisty, fiercely independent people apply “sexy” to non-sex, as in, "That's a sexy plan, Bob." "Thanks, Stan. I thought of it during a sexy brainstorming session." (Thanks to one of my sons for this one.) “This new take on this adjective can make boardrooms, especially those full of rich, old white guys, awkward and confusing. Can an idea be ‘sexy’?” Well, son, luckily you’re not in an executive boardroom yet. A university fundraiser told me that if you can put a donor’s name on a building he’s paid for, that’s a sexy idea, unlike simply putting his money into an administrative slush fund, for example. There’s no accounting for tastes.
Two more of my least faves:
From a reader who says she watches too much HGTV:
And
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