A dictionary and pair of scissors next to words that have been c
Every year about this time I like to do a roundup of words and phrases that drive me crazy. I always figure that some year I won’t have enough material, as I try not to repeat myself. And yet, writers and speakers and broadcasters just keep churning this stuff out.
The kind of language that gets on my nerves comes in two categories. The first is innocent enough; it’s just overuse. For example, a few years ago people couldn’t stop saying “at the end of the day.” Nothing wrong with “at the end of the day.” But after all was said and done, in the final analysis and after the fat lady had sung, it became like a verbal tic, the equivalent of “ya know” or the more recent “right?”
Overused words just need a vacation. We need a break from one another. Just a separation. Someday they may be welcomed back into polite society.
But the second category of words that I find irritating really gets my dander up. These are words and phrases designed to make the speaker sound like they know what they’re talking about, when they don’t have a clue. Or they’re words and phrases spoken with the intention of mystifying the audience and leading them to believe that the speaker possesses some deep understanding about a subject when they don’t. What these words all have in common is that they’re pretentious as hell.
So, without further ado, here’s my list of words and phrases that — if it were up to me and why the heck isn’t it? — would not be uttered in the New Year.
Authenticity. The most phony people I know use the word “authentic” whenever they can, and they find that they can way too often. This year let’s get real and only say something is authentic when it really is.
Complementary football. Here’s the first one this year from the wide world of sports. It cropped up in the fall and it means that your team is good at all three aspects of the game: offense, defense and special teams. But to just say that a team is good all around is so lame. Look, nobody’s paying Tom Brady $37 million to say boring stuff like that. But complementary football? Please. We can all get 1,000% behind that, no question.
Downhill. Another one from the sports world, this one gets used in virtually every game now. It started in football with running backs going downhill. It basically means breaking through the defensive line and picking up a bunch of yards while running “in space.” (Don’t get me started on “in space.”) But now, in baseball, runners are stealing second base by going downhill. Basketballers, who used to do “fast breaks,” aren’t breaking any more. Nope. They’re going downhill. Oddly, I’ve never heard the phrase used in skiing.
Iconic. This means “worthy of veneration.” How many things are really worthy of veneration? Well, yes, the Citizen Dave blog, of course yes, but I mean beyond the obvious?
Impactful. Things can influence or affect us, but very few things get up and punch us in the mouth. What’s wrong with something being “influential?”
Interrogate. We don’t just ask questions anymore. We INTERROGATE! Asking questions is so passive and so, oh I don’t know, Obama era. But INTERROGATION, now that’s real! Even, dare I say it, authentic and impactful. It implies that we don’t ask questions so much as we put the wrong-headed person in a hard, straight-backed chair under a bare lightbulb and we make them sit there and answer our questions until they confess. We don’t necessarily get the rubber hose out, but we heavily imply that it’s in the room somewhere. We don’t have time for a conversation. We already know the answers. We just want you to say them out loud and then we’ll let you go on your way.
Journey. All of a sudden everybody’s on a trip. Nobody has a career anymore; they’re on a life journey. We don’t belong to churches anymore. No, we’re on a spiritual journey. Can’t we all just settle down in one place for a change? Let’s park the great U-Haul of life for a year and appreciate where we are.
Own. We used to take responsibility for things, now we have to buy them.
Physicality. Sports again! Highly paid professional athletes, who were born big and strong, who have played a sport since they were 2 years old and who train 365 days a year, display physicality. How did that happen? Darndest thing.
Sample size. Okay, so sports has had a huge year in the world of bad language. When broadcasters want to signal that they don’t know what they’re talking about they say something like, “He’s really looking good at quarterback with the one touchdown and no interceptions. Of course, only three downs is a limited sample size.” In the first place, a player’s entire record is not a sample. It’s the whole damn thing. And second, it’s pretentious. It provides a whiff of pseudo-scientific inquiry to an opinion. Lastly, it’s essentially admitting that the commentator is making a judgement about a player’s ability with little or nothing in the way of evidence. That kind of thing has been the case in politics since, oh I don’t know, let’s say 2016. But now just-pull-it-out-of-your-hair opinions have creeped over into the sacred world of sports commentary — where it really matters.
I’ve been reading and listening all year, so I think I have a large enough sample size and I’ve interrogated the issue enough to make an authentic, impactful statement that I’m willing to own. As a result, I’m writing downhill and even displaying a certain physicality and employing complementary vocabulary on this, my iconic journey.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
