More Verbal Tics

They're back... the phrases that make me crazy!

Verbal and oral are not the same. Verbal means words; oral means the mouth. I guess oral carries certain, uh, baggage that makes people hesitate to say it in polite company. And so, striking a blow, if you will, for linguistic accuracy everywhere, I declare, "Oral! Oral! Oral!"

Disinterested and Uninterested are cousins, not identical twins. Disinterested means you don't have a stake; uninterested means you don't care.

What's a "Think Piece?" Isn't it a given that an article is predicated on thought? So we're really talking about just... an opinion piece. And what's wrong with a nice opinion? This one, BTW, reminds me of Bush's futile and misplaced attempt to bring into vogue the term "homicide bomber" instead of "suicide bomber." When someone plants a bomb, we can assume homicide was the objective. The bomber taking his own life in the process is a distinguishing characteristic (although, sadly, increasingly less so).

Can we just say orient instead of orientate?

For God's sake, don't say "monies!" The only way to sound more incompetently self-important is to talk about "persons" instead of "people."

I like that prisons are disappearing in favor of correctional facilities (domestic) and detention centers (abroad). No one is being imprisoned, thank you very much; just detained and corrected. And how bad can that be?

What's a muscular foreign policy? The phrase seems to have the wrong focus: "muscular" is about appearances, not results. What's wrong with "strong," which describes capabilities? Or "aggressive," which describes a behavior or attitude? What's next, enhancing foreign policy with steroids?

Ikea says "temporarily oversold" instead of "sold out." How can you oversell something? Is it like overbooking a plane? Next someone will be selling "pre-owned" cars... oh, wait, they already are.

And now, from the Department of Redundancy Department...

hoary old (hoary new?)

past experience (future experience? This one even finds its way into the Economist!)

targeted assassination (random assassination?)

overhype (for when hyping it just isn't enough...)

refer back/ahead (refer is sufficient)

past history (future history?)

Why do presidents feel compelled to have "doctrines?" It seems to me that "doctrine" is just a self-important way of saying "obvious policy that anyone could have figured out." Alternatively, it can mean "Divisive and bad idea for which I'm trying to develop unstoppable momentum by attaching to it the big D word. Don't argue -- if it was good enough for Monroe, it's good enough for me."

(Don't forget, Brezhnev was reputed to have a doctrine, too. It was, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine.")

Why is it that newspapers call people fighting the Sudanese government "rebels," while people fighting the Iraqi government are labeled "insurgents"?

Can you flagellate someone else, or can you really only self-flagellate?

I always find it odd when someone feels compelled to declare himself not just married, but "happily married" (or worse, "very happily married"). Was there any doubt? Is he worried we might think otherwise? Could he be... protesting too much? I'd like to do a study on divorce rates of people who describe themselves this way. I'll bet it's higher than the norm.

In May, the Government Accountability Office released a report on America's public diplomacy efforts around the Islamic world. The report is titled, "State Department Efforts Lack Certain Communications Elements and Face Significant Challenges."

Now there's an example of clear communication, right there in the title. I wouldn't want the report to be called, "State Department Efforts to Woo the Muslim World Ineffective." Maybe the State Department has been taking its communications cues from the GAO?

Let's end on a happy note. Thomas Pfeffer of the American Heart Association in Los Angeles, says, "Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in swimming pool."

Hard to argue with that.