Wrong Words
By Andrew Meblin
Thousands of writers over time have covered this topic. I am definitely so far from the first to gripe about the misuse of words I can’t see the front of the line. Anyway, oh and two.
Incredible. It means NOT credible, not to be believed, but people use it to indicate when a thing or an experience was extremely positive. I recently read someone’s declaration that a news report was “incredibly credible.” Not making that up. A person actually wrote that. Describing something as “incredibly fun” is okay because the fun may have been of such intensity that the person did not believe it possible before experiencing it. However using incredible to substitute for words like very or extremely is sloppy.
Tarmac. The word came from the modification of a Macadam road surface. Named after a Scotsman, McAdam, who engineered the laying of rocks and dust to keep the automobile traffic from disturbing the rocks of which the Macadam surface is composed. The dust filled in between the cracks holding the rocks in place. Losing the small particles of rock (dust, eh?) meant the larger pebbles and stones were free to move about, degrading the road surface. Got it?
Then an Italian fellow had the idea to seal the road, glue it together in a way, by applying a layer of heated tar, which seeped down between the rocs, and then cooled. From there the mixing of rocks, sand, and tar resulted in asphalt, originally referred to as “tarred macadam,” abbreviated tarmac.
Since I don’t know when, TV anchors and reporters have used tarmac to mean the paved surface below an aircraft, “President Biden has stepped onto the tarmac, wearing his signature aviator sunglasses, despite the fact that he does not actually pilot Air Force One.” Unless the roadway is dirt, gravel, or concrete, chances are it is made with tarmac, also called asphalt. I get a sense that the people who use the term tarmac when referring to the pavement below an airplane think it makes them seem smarter. I’m projecting, of course.
Literally. Figuratively is what they mean most of the time, and virturally will do as will a few other words. My cousin wrote in a text message something equivalent to, “Trump is literally shredding The Constitution!” We know that didn’t happen, though some freaks on both side of the poli-spect might applaud if he truly, shredded the document. Figuratively. I fear literally is drifting toward being used to mean something like, Dude, this is serious stuff here.
Decimate. The Romans gave us many things, some good, some not—indoor plumbing, aqueducts, representative governing, pizza. They also oppressed others, invading and conquering their Mediterranean neighbors, and northwest all the way to the island of Britain. Occasionally, when people resisted, Roman commanders would take precious salt and sow it into the garden plots, thereby killing off the soil’s ability to host vegetative life, except maybe pickle weed.
Another nasty trick Romans allegedly did was to take ten percent of a population, one in every ten, and smite them! That means kill. Ten indicated by the letters D, E, and C, so we get decade, ten years. Deciliter is a tenth of a liter. When Romans decimated the opposing army, they killed off one in ten, to teach them a lesson, one supposes. Sometimes one will read that some thing or act decimated something else, but it is used in a way to mean close to eliminated. Which is what should be written. Do not blithely assume that the word decadent means ten dents your truck. That word stems from the Latin prefix de, meaning apart, or down, and kad, falling. So decadent originally meant something was falling apart. Literally.
Summing up here; decimate does not mean a group of animals or people or a fighting force was nearly destroyed. It was just ten percent.
Honorable mention: Out of order because it invites snarky inquiries such as, “When do you think the some more order will come in?” And the phrase is a cop-out, suggesting a lake of ownership. When something is truly out of order, it would be like this:
A B C D F E G H J I L K, and so on. Several letters are out of order in that example. Just say broken, kaput, schnitzenfarffle. Made up that last one.
Since Covid-19 triggered a staphylococcus aureas infection in my spine, which went undiagnosed for FIVE weeks, necessitating neurosurgery resulting in partial paralysis as well as three months of a bedridden existence, I have played word games in my head. With an excessive emphasis on rhyming, zany word combinations, noticing license plates on cars, and even thinking of “funny” combinations of words that would fit on a license plate. For instance, hearing the name Marco, I often think of the young man who was left by his dad in China, as some sort of collateral, as I recall. Then this jumps to the Spanish word for chicken, pollo.
Final destination: Marco Pollo, a restaurant that serves chicken, hopefully run by a person named Marco.
And there is is!
How about you? What words do you encounter that are used incorrectly? I’ve only touched on a few, so the cat is in your court. Comment section is open for your responses.