A glossary of completely natural words.

This is something that Captain shared with us that I found amusing, interesting, and generally fitting to what I think about the jargon we hear around us every day. I wish I could insert all the conversation in there too (and I may provide some commentary that was said) as we all had a wonderful laugh at some of these things. It's a bit long, but completely worth the read, I assure you. Enjoy!

A Glossary of Completely Natural Words
by Mark Patinkin, published in the Providence Journal (of Providence, Rhode Island)

I noticed that a "truth-in-menu" bill has been introduced at the Rhode Island General Assembly. It's to force restaurants to be honest when they describe their dishes. Many, for example, try to sneak around the red-flag words like "frozen." They insert "fresh" instead.

For the past few years, I've been collecting examples of how people sneak around red-flag words. It seems to be an increasing problem. One way to stop it, perhaps, is to publicize the abusers. So today, I offer a sampling from the collection.

Autoyards these days believe it's beneath them to stock junk radiators. They're now called "pre-dismantled, previously owned parts."

The next time you buy a bathroom plunger, you might get a blank stare if you ask for the bathroom plunger section. Certain manufacturers have taken to calling them "hydroforce blast cups."

Then there's the cemetery business. Some are no longer advertising the availability of burial plots. Instead, they now offer "pre-need arrangements."

And in Canada, nannies don't simply nanny anymore. A firm up there said its nannies "interface with children in an habitual way."

Government is particularly good at this. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, found "serious adverse effects" in the use of a certain chemical. The adverse effect was 38 deaths. Pretty adverse.

And if you get a call from your just-convicted husband telling you not to worry about it, they're only going to put him in the "capital sentences unit," maybe you should worry about it after all. That's the new phrase for death row.

One of my favorite examples comes from the Army War College instructor who told his class that when you're surrounded, you should never look upon the enemy as a superior force that's about to crush you. Consider them a "target-rich environment."

The insurance business sometimes refers to death as a "mortality experience." Actually, they do even better. The way it usually comes out is that groups that don't smoke have "a more favorable mortality experience" than those who do.

School systems are avoiding the term "budget cut." It's more popular to refer to that as "institutional self-help."

In the same vein, AT&T was recently asked to explain why a few hundred of its employees were fired. They weren't fired, AT&T said. "They were involuntarily separated." (When SUU fires a faculty member, it's not a firing, it's just that the faculty member's contract was not renewed.)

Similarly, a Rolls spokesman refused to say his cars break down. Occasionally, he allowed, they "fail to proceed."

A college student was recently asked by a reporter whether his friends were into drugs. The denied it, but did concede that one or two have "pharmaceutical preferences."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army has begun to refer to civilian casualties as "collateral damage."

Social workers are getting better at this, too. They rarely use the word "murderer." Instead, their clients have shown "anti-social behavior patterns." A "slum" in their lexicon, is a "culturally deprived area." Poor people are "deprived elements."

I decided to take an assortment of these examples and try stringing them together. Here's how it came out:

"A deprived element showed anti-social behavior yesterday, causing collateral damage to four passers-by. His attorney asked the judge for leniency, explaining his client has pharmaceutical preferences. But he was sent nevertheless to the capital sentences unit where, in two weeks, he will suffer adverse effects. Pre-need arrangements are already being planned."

Most of these examples are amusing, I suppose, but there's a serious side to the truth-in-language issue. Bill Moyers once spoke of it eloquently.

"The great enemy of understanding," he said, "is imprecise language. Yet the pollution of our language spreads everywhere, like great globs of sludge crowding the shores of public thought."

May we all find ever more direct ways to say what we mean.

Love,
Anna Grace