George Will wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled “Five words that today are gratingly misapplied or worn out”. It is not good. Let’s see why.
First of all, George Will is still alive?! Holy shit!
Second of all, this post stinks. George Will clearly had a deadline to meet and he had no ideas, so he barfed out nonsense about language. This is not surprising because George Will has a history of bad linguistics. I’ll start by pointing out Will’s errors in is wrong, but stay tuned in the end for why his article is also dangerous.
Here’s Will’s first complaint:
This is wrong. George Will is wrong about this. The word massive has been used for things that have no mass since at least 1581.That’s 450 years ago.
George Will wants you to speak and write as if you were born before the Elizabethan Era. Will is not a serious man.
This is a tired complaint about English. People have been moaning about it for years. Get some original material, George.
Merriam-Webster actually has an explainer in their entry for unique, so I’ll let them handle it:
Many commentators have objected to the comparison or modification (as by somewhat or very) of unique, often asserting that a thing is either unique or it is not. Objections are based chiefly on the assumption that unique has but a single absolute sense, an assumption contradicted by information readily available in a dictionary.
I’ll also note that I wasn’t able to find that quote Will gives. He doesn’t give a citation for it and an internet search returns only his article. So he’s getting angry at a sentence that he made up. That’s sad.
Ok, this is a weird one. According to George Will, we should use few instead of only because it is less wordy. Let’s try it in the sentence that Will gives:
Mickey Mantle is one of the only switch hitters in the Hall of Fame
Mickey Mantle is one of few switch hitters in the Hall of Fame
That’s literally only one word shorter! What the heck is going on here?!
First of all, back the fuck up off of New Jersey, George. You’re from Illinois, ok? You don’t get to make fun of New Jersey.
Second, this is just what iconic means…? Is George Will just getting angry at definitions now?
But also Will is wrong about what iconic means…? New Jersey’s boardwalks aren’t “somewhat famous” and “somewhat distinguishable” from other boardwalks. They are an icon of New Jersey. So they are iconic. Somebody please tell George Will that this is how language works.
Ok, “trying to nail applesauce to smoke” goes hard. Credit where credit’s due.
But vibe is dead now, folks. George Will just used it. It is deceased.
I don’t know what George Will is talking about when he says that vibe has no fixed meaning. On the one hand, no words have a fixed meaning. Their meanings can change and shift according to how people use them. On the other hand, I can understand why George Will doesn’t understand what vibe means because it basically means “the general feeling of something or someone” and George Will is a corpse without feelings. So it tracks that vibe would break his brain.
Will spends the next sixe paragraphs complaining about vibe – and it only helps to show how out of touch he is. I mean, he cites the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal using vibe. If those publications are using a word and you don’t understand what it means (even though you have worked in journalism for five decades!), then that’s on you. But also you started the article with a lyric from the Beach Boys with vibe in it. You know what it means, George!
One of Will’s paragraphs complaining about vibe references Shakespeare.
Yeah, Shakespeare never used vibe. He also didn’t use the word baseball, George, but you somehow managed to write a whole book on the topic. So what are we doing here?
Now we get to the real problem with George Will’s article.
Will somehow channels his incorrect ideas about language into a complaint about queer people. His complaint is confusing (because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about), but it is also misleading and damaging. Will links to an informed article by Dr. Elizabeth J. Meyer about how homophobic bullying at school is harmful. What’s wrong with that, George?
By linking a dislike for the word vibe to a complaint about queer people, Will is telling us they are similar. He is saying that disliking queer people is just as normal as disliking words. It is not. Homophobia harms people. It harms a group of people who have historically been oppressed and vilified (and that’s putting it nicely). No one gives a shit if a columnist for the Washington Post has a problem with the word only. It literally doesn’t matter and it shouldn’t be printed. But hating on queer people is going to harm people.
A lot of us have peeves about language. We don’t have a column in the Washington Post to air them and that’s probably a very good thing. Because language peeves are pretty normal and mostly harmless. But when they turn into opinions that will harm a group of people, then they need to be shut the fuck down.
Speaking of which, I’m going to go watch some baseball – the only game that transcends the boundary between fury and repose. Go Phils.