Category: words

SIMPLISTIC: “treating complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are” — New Oxford American Dictionary

Glitterary Week actually began earlier this month when Lexicide published a fan submission so egregious we couldn’t wait to get it out there. We kick off the official event, however, with simplistic, which way too many people use when they mean simple.

As any ape can see from the definition, simplistic and simple are not synonyms. Concrete things, such as machines and people, can only be simple. Ideas, plans and solutions are simple if they are easy to understand and express. They are simplistic if they lack the depth and intricacy needed to address the problem or issue. Putting up a fence to keep out coyotes is a simple solution for a sheep rancher. Putting up a fence to keep out illegal immigrants is a simplistic solution to a complex problem.

As with so many other misused words (too many to list here), simplistic is a negative word, yet consultants crow about their simplistic strategies and sales reps brag about how simplistic their software solution is. If you are one of these people (hands proudly on hips or thumbs hooked smugly in suspenders), then carry on with confidence. For one day, your idiocy will win the day, the word simple will cease to exist, and you will join your products in being called simplistic.

— Otto E. Mezzo

BOON: “1. benefit, favor; especially: one that is given in answer to a request; 2. a timely benefit: blessing; from Old Norse bōn request; akin to Old English bēn prayer, bannan to summon” —Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition

BOOM: “2. a rapid expansion or increase” —Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition

My wife has had two equally distinguished careers — as a lawyer and as a CPA. Both pay extremely well (yes!), both have trained her to say “no” with great frequency (boo) and both demand extreme precision. So imagine my surprise when she spoke up in defense of corporate illiterates who perpetrate persistent and willful lexicide. “They’re businesspeople!” she intoned. “They’re not word experts. What do you expect?” She then proceeded upon the dread path I’ve been dragged down so many times: “Why not say you leverage new technology? You could say you’re gambling with a new, untried technology.”

This post-facto justification drives me crazy. People who speak of leveraging technology or talent do not think of incurring risk, any more than those who speak of stagnant websites think of fusty odors. Sure, they’ll tell you the website “stinks” or is “stale,” but they and I know the speakers are desperately covering their mistakes.

I lead off with this bitter jeremiad as a preemptive strike, for today’s lexicide is boon, which is being crowded out by the incorrect boom, as in “Ajax has been a boom to the development of social media platforms.” No. The word is boon, for which read “blessing, answer to our prayers.” Boom is not the same thing. A “publishing boom” or a “futures boom” is a rapid increase in activity in those areas. Now, I know what you’ll say: “Well, Ajax has certainly enabled social media to prosper, so it is a boom.” If you cannot see how imprecise, inaccurate and poorly reasoned that fallacy is, then this is not the website for you. This is.

Precision matters. In your pursuit of profit, are you focused or singleminded? Is your team enthusiastic, zealous or fanatical? Is your spending plan frugal, thrifty or miserly? If you care so much to avoid problems in favor of issues, then why use a word that is clearly wrong? Boon describes the cause; boom describes the desired effect. They are not interchangeable just because they sound similar.

So the missus refused to back down (she is a lawyer, after all), even after admitting that some usages are just plain wrong. So targets of my scorn, you have a defender — a boon to lexicidal maniacs everywhere. Me, I’d prefer delivering a boom — from the muzzle of a Remington 870 12-gauge. Fortunately for you, the wife says no.

— Otto E. Mezzo

METHODOLOGY: “a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity” — New Oxford American Dictionary

Methodology may be one of the most overused words in business, and thanks to the recent shenanigans of certain climate research scientists, the word is mushrooming all over the ‘net like mosquitos at a global warming summit. Most of the news articles used methodology correctly to describe an all-embracing system of methods and beliefs. A few referred to “the scientific methodology.” BZZZ! Wrong! What the East Anglia folks dissed was the scientific method, even though their methodology is now also suspect. Everyone straight?

Methodologies are not the same as methods. Your company may have a methodology of risk assessment or forecasting that encompasses several methods, processes and assumptions. But just because you may have more than one method for a process, it doesn’t mean you have a methodology. So you can stop pontificating about your screen printing methodologies or your shipping methodologies. The word you want is methods.

The suffix “ology” is Greek for “study” — technically, this makes methodology the study of methods. Those five letters exist for a reason other than to add more syllables to your verbiage and make you (supposedly) sound smarter. If you insist on using big words incorrectly, you need to re-examine your methodology to encompass a less pretentious attitude and better writing, speaking and thinking methods.

— Otto E. Mezzo

QUANTUM LEAP: (in physics) “an abrupt transition of a system described by quantum mechanics from one of its discrete states to another, as the fall of an electron in an atom to an orbit of lower energy;” (vernacular) “any sudden and significant change, advance, or increase” —Random House Dictionary

Last month, Lexicide deconstructed “ground zero,” so while we’re in a nuclear state of mind, let’s turn our electron microscopes on quantum leap. When sub-atomic particles change states, the change is sudden and the stages in between state #1 and state #2 are imperceptible. One nanosecond, they’re one place; the next, they’re someplace else. Subatomic particles don’t walk — apparently, they take the transporter. I don’t understand it any better than you (and I’m not talking to you folks over at CalTech or the Large Hadron Collider), but I do understand when eggheads speak of quantum leaps, that’s what they mean.

I also understand that quantum leaps are by definition very, very, very tiny. Yes, they are sudden. Yes, they are significant (and puzzling), but they are rarely colossal in scale. Not so in the vernacular usage. If you speak of a quantum leap in skill, growth or numbers, it must be a dramatic change. I suppose on an atomic level, a change from one state to the next ranks as dramatic. However, the key characteristic of a quantum leap is not scale, but suddenness. More and more I hear phrases like: “In five to ten years, this company will have made a quantum leap in terms of sales.” If it takes ten years, it is not a quantum leap. To sum up: sudden change=quantum leap; sudden and dramatic change=quantum leap; dramatic, yet gradual, change=dramatic change.

So I’m issuing an out-of-character plea: do not subject this handy phrase to a dramatic (but not sudden) shift in meaning. Quantum leap is too cool a term to leave only to PhDs. However, it’s also too useful an analogy to abandon to BS.

— Otto E. Mezzo

GROUND ZERO: “the point on the earth’s surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb.” —New Oxford American Dictionary

There are many things that puzzle my puny brain. Why use corn sweetener instead of sugar? How can manufacturing and shipping trinkets from China be more cost-effective than making them in Nebraska? Why are French actresses so unreasonably sexy when their male co-stars look like New York cab drivers during a transit strike? (Worse, why do American women find these schlubs alluring?) But by far the most taxing question is: why do people use words and phrases incorrectly when correct terms are in common circulation?

Take ground zero. Everyone knows what it means. You do not want to be at ground zero. Ever. So why “start at ground zero,” as so many managers, project directors, etc., insist? While not strictly wrong, it smacks of imprecision. If you start with a blank slate, you start from nothing, zero or square one. These are terms that everyone knows and uses, and yet somewhere along the way, somebody somewhere confused the unconfusing ground zero with these common, simple words.

Is it a poetic reference to the site of the World Trade Center attack, an event that forced us to rethink our national priorities? After all, you say, that’s an apt metaphor for any business strategy on which my team labors for months, only to be knocked down by shifting requirements or corporate restructuring, thus forcing us to rewrite the whole plan. Don’t make me laugh. Some office drone obviously got the big numbers in square one and ground zero mixed up and shot his mouth off without thinking. And for this we went to college.

How about this? You go back to ground zero. I’ll just hang here by this red button. Now we’re good.

— Otto E. Mezzo

ENERVATE: “cause (someone) to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken” —New Oxford American Dictionary

“What we’re doing with the stimulus monies, and you’re going to see these go up very shortly, is we’re putting solar panels on top of every public parking rooftop. That will enervate the building but will also allow us to have plugs at each stall for hybrid/electric and electric vehicles.” (Albuquerque mayor Martin Chavez in an interview with The New Mexico Daily Lobo, published August 24, 2009)

It’s tiring, truly it is. I just returned from a Washington, D.C., trip with my two very energetic boys. Between miles of urban hiking and inadequate sleep (which is the norm for me), I am exhausted. But not nearly as exhausted as I am when I hear people use words incorrectly, knowing it will create a meme that rampages through the internet like a stampede of Huns, thus forcing me to write another article with exactly the same words… so… tired…

Enervate does not mean “energize” … sounds like it … so what? … if you mean “energize” …  just use energize … so pretentious … why do people insist … why do I bother? … sleep ……..

— Otto E. Mezzzzz……..

References:
The interview at Daily Lobo.com

STAGNANT: “(of a body of water or the atmosphere of a confined space) having no current or flow and often having an unpleasant smell as a consequence: a stagnant ditch; (figurative) showing no activity; dull and sluggish: a stagnant economy” — New Oxford American Dictionary

“Stagnant welfare caseloads create puzzle“ — headline from Tulsa World

Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative. That’s not only Tin Pan Alley’s rule, but Madison Avenue’s as well. And yet, when it comes to word choice, so many folks make the neutral (or the positive) negative. They call for postmortems on live projects and proudly hail their verbiage. So welcome stagnant to the lexicon of perfectly acceptable business descriptors that in reality describe the nasty and undesirable.

Stagnant water is a plague. It breeds mosquitoes, algae and all manner of funk that turns oases of life-giving water into cesspools of slime and disease. Carrying the analogy over into other ebbing, flowing things like the economy and sales is natural. But not everything flat or inactive is stagnant. For example, in the Tulsa World headline, a better word would be flat or stable. Yes, the rate of welfare filings can decrease to nil, but is that a bad thing? Stagnant=BAD, just so you know. And sometimes, people just use the word wrong. HTML websites are not stagnant; they are static.

The shift in stagnant‘s meaning has an obvious source. Stagnant, stable and static all share a triad of leading letters, so it’s either carelessness or pretentiousness that drives people to sub one word for another. (Is stagnant really a better SAT word than static?) But you know what? If politicians cheerfully tout the enormity of their legislations, then why can’t companies shrug off their stagnant position in the market? I, for one, can’t wait to attend a shareholder meeting in a waist-deep pool of oily, brackish water.

— Otto E. Mezzo

Reference: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=298&articleid=20090711_298_0_OKLAHO638820