The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
Page 14
The term “lesion” is rarely used by lay people, but I’ve seen it used often by science writers. It is almost universally used incorrectly. As an example, in an article on foot-and-mouth disease this sentence appears: “Foot and mouth disease is a viral infection that causes fever, blisters and lesions, and results in weight loss and a reduction in milk production” (The New York Times Magazine, April 6). The word lesion, from the Latin for “injury,” is used very generally by physicians. It is used to refer to any abnormal condition of the body. Thus a blister is often a lesion, but so is weight loss, and so is reduction in milk production. Because it is a general term, it is often used to refer to an abnormality that has been described but does not fit a defined category. In the phrase I quote, the implication is that a lesion is a clearly defined entity like a blister. It is an impressive-sounding word, but it seems to carry no meaning when used by science writers.
Paul Cunningham, MD
Tacoma, Washington
Please tell your editors that “methodology” is not a fancy word for method, nor is it a word for fancy method. To quote Evans and Evans, “The use of the word ‘methodology’ for ‘method’ is common among social scientists, many of whom seem to have a great love for redundant syllables.”
And please tell them that the misuse of “parameter” is simply a display of ignorance of mathematics.
David Fax
Canton, Massachusetts
Chemists think of an “organized body” as an animal or a plant containing compounds derived from hydrocarbons. Hah, hah, hah!!! The word “organized” has no relationship to “organic” as used in “organic chemistry.” Bill, you don’t make me fulminate, you make me laugh. By the way, fulmination is an example of a word derived from a scientific word and now perfectly accepted in non-scientific discourse (without objections from chemists, purists and non-purists). Often, technicians working with scientists will initiate “corruptions” of the original word.
Jock Nicholson
San Diego, California
Should meteorologists fulminate? Fulmen is, after all, a visual rather than sonic display, and experts who study atmospheric conditions in order to forecast the weather are not often concerned with meteors. When did those usages become acceptable?
I especially appreciate your mentioning my pet peeve, popular misuse of the term “exponential.” Without fulminating, I try to point out that the exponential function can take a zero, negative, or even imaginary, argument: radioactive decay, which models “shrinkage,” is a valid instance of a rate of change proportional to size.
Noel M. Edelson
New Rochelle, New York
You do exactly what you were writing about regarding stolen meanings. Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning union, from which the English word yoke is derived. Yoga, or more properly, Raja Yoga is a spiritual path toward enlightenment. Yoga refers to union with all, in the sense of the Divine or Universe or some equivalent.
One of the many steps is named Asana, meaning posture. This is what you and most people think is yoga. It is not. Please call it Asana Yoga, although what you describe as a rooster position is very far removed from Yoga.
The so-called Yoga classes offered in the U.S. and elsewhere are physical exercise classes—nothing more. Another case of stolen meaning.
Gerry Dorman
Lindenhurst, New York
Scientists themselves are the guiltiest of “word robbery.” They typically assign very specific meanings to such common, broad terms as “frequency,” “wave,” “tolerance,” “elastic” and “resonance,” thus confusing the heck out of the rest of us.
If they pay attention to CONTEXT, these erudite complainers will find that their understanding of everyday English will grow exponentially.
Peggy Troupin, PhD
New York, New York
You report that Prof. Tobin of Tufts University (where I once was an undergraduate) is not offended by the use of “quantum” to mean “sudden,” provided we don’t use it to mean “huge.” But of course that is what is usually implied by the term in general parlance. Prof. Tobin knows how very small a quantum is; it equals the frequency of radiant energy multiplied by Planck’s constant, which is 6.25 x 10-27 , or 0.00000000000000000000000000625, that’s 26 zeros after the decimal point. Used correctly, a quantum leap is a change SO tiny as to be undetected by unaided human senses.
Curt W. Beck
Professor of Chemistry
Vassar College
Pleasant Valley, New York
One of the most flagrant thefts from specialists’ vocabularies is orchestration. I am a composer and I actually have orchestrated a quantity of music, some of which has been performed by major orchestras.
But over the past twenty years or so I have heard the word used in absurd contexts such as: this or that CEO “splendidly orchestrated an international trade agreement with China.” Or, a U.S. secretary of state “has made great strides in orchestrating peace in the Middle East.” Or a university president “orchestrated an effective fund drive for the endowment.”
Usually it is an authority figure who orchestrates and I think this comes from the mistaken idea that the supreme authority figure of the symphony orchestra, the conductor, is “orchestrating” when he or she conducts a work—pointing commandingly to this or that instrument or section of the orchestra. Often conducting from memory, he is viewed as a genius and a great leader. From this comes the metaphor of a great leader (of anything) “orchestrating” rather than simply planning.
But it is a bad metaphor, for in most cases the conductor is leading the orchestra in a work that has been orchestrated by someone else, usually the composer. The exceptions are composer/conductors such as Gustav Mahler, who conducted many of his own symphonies with the New York Philharmonic, or film composers such as John Williams who frequently conduct their own film scores.
Ravel really did orchestrate Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, but as far as I know, Henry Kissinger, William Silber or Bill Gates never orchestrated a thing.
John D. White
Evergreen, Colorado
Exponential growth refers to growth conforming to an exponent, e.g., the accumulation achieved by squaring the number 2, then squaring that accumulation, etc. If the exponent is a positive number above 1, the rate of rise of the accumulation does indeed become rapid in time. Plotted out on semi-logarithmic graph paper, exponential growth results in a straight line. Plotted out on graph paper, exponential growth is parabolic.
Your savings account grows arithmetically, unless your bank is unique, as does our economy when growing at 0.1 percent a year.
Kai Kristensen, MA
La Jolla, California
Fulminations II. When a word with a clear meaning in a specialized field like science, math or music crosses over into the general language, its meaning can get twisted. This infuriates the specialists, who see it not merely as a form of linguistic corruption but also as highway robbery from their vocabulary. Examples:
Physicists cannot string together a theory to explain why quantum jump, which in their world means “a sudden alteration in an atom’s energy,” and is therefore exceedingly small, has leapt into general public usage with the meaning of “huge change.”
Psychiatrists can be seen to approach hysteria when schizophrenia, a psychosis often characterized by withdrawal and hallucinations, is bandied about by a public that thinks it means “split personality” and uses schizoid to describe any duality.
Neuroscientists wince at the way congenital, which to them means “inborn; existing at birth,” is stretched by vituperative columnists to a more general “habitual, chronic.”
Mathematicians cannot calculate why their parameter, “a variable constant used to determine other variables,” is confused by laypeople with the quite different perimeter and has now adopted the second word’s meaning of “limits” or “characteristics.”
And musicians note the way crescendo, which to them means “a gradual incr
ease in volume,” has been seized by nonmusicians to mean “climax”—not the reaching but the reached.
A “crescendo” is not a peak of sound, or a sudden outburst, but a gradual increase in volume. Loudness is not even necessarily implied; Tchaikovsky, for example, goes so far as to indicate a crescendo from ppppp to pppp. Also, “staccato” does not mean rapid, cf. the opening of In the Hall of the Mountain King from Grieg’s music to Peer Gynt.
Worse, though, is the appropriation of “orchestration,” to mean any kind of arrangement or planning. I’ve done orchestration and taught it, and I know it to be a complex technical subject. I don’t mind so much hearing about President Bush “orchestrating” a deal with Senate Democrats, but when Dr. Laura Schlessinger thanks her DJ for “orchestrating our music,” I experience a crescendo in my blood pressure and accelerando in my heart rate.
James Redding
Granville, New York
Fulminations III. If the issue I raise today cries out for an answer, if the point of this article invites close cross-examination, am I begging the question?
No. Though my trickle-down convictions may beggar my neighbor, I will not beg the question, because I am not in the fallacy dodge. Of the many fulminations from specialists about the distortions of their vocabularies by the lay public, this mendicant phrase leads all the rest.
Here’s how it is mistakenly used: Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, noted that a downturn in the economy would reduce tax revenues and said: “So it begs the question, how large the tax cut? And it begs the question, how long the tax cut?”
“As a retired teacher of logic,” writes Daniel Merrill, who taught philosophy at Oberlin College, “I implore you: give the technical use of beg the question back to the logicians!”
A Rutgers University philosophy professor, Tim Mauldin, agrees: “Let’s stomp out this abuse!” He explains: “If the defender of the thesis asks (‘begs’) that his interlocutor accept as a premise of the argument the very issue in dispute (‘the question’), then he or she has begged the question. This error is sometimes called ‘circular reasoning.’”
Example of circular question-begging: “Parallel lines never meet because they are parallel.” That takes you right around the barn and back where you started.
Example of linear question-begging: “Anything Safire says about anything is suspect because you can’t believe what you read in the newspapers.” All the people who fervently believe that to be true make no legitimate argument because they take for granted a premise that is unproven. Their solution to that would be to offer proof: “Safire is suspect because he misspelled the name of James Madison’s wife (Hello, Dolley!).” That causes me to beg pardon, not question.
Schoolteachers should petition their principals to stop taking for granted this abuse of fair argument. Let us now turn to the second most constant gripe of ophthalmologists (the first is the tendency of linguistic Magoos to pronounce the first syllable of their profession with a “p” rather than the correct “f”).
“Myopic, in ophthalmological practice,” writes Heskel Haddad, MD, “is a person with sharp vision at near. However, it is often used to connote someone as ‘narrow-minded.’ ”
That’s the meaning Ralph Nader had in mind at the Detroit Economic Club last year, when he called the assembled auto executives who opposed tighter fuel economy standards “craven and myopic.”
The Greek myops means “shortsighted.” Distant objects cannot be seen sharply because light entering the eye is focused in front of the retina.
Shortsighted and nearsighted are interchangeable, according to the ophthalmologist Malvin Krinn, MD, of Washington. “But nearsighted may sound a little more sophisticated.”
The word myopia was coined in 1693, and the meaning was soon extended. In 1801, the poet and novelist Charlotte Smith wrote of “the myopia of the mind,” and in 1891 Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet of the breakfast table, referred to “the kind of partial blindness which belongs to intellectual myopia.”
Because their word’s meaning was stolen so long ago, eye doctors should blink away their tears at the loss. Besides, the general sense has a nice metaphoric connection to the eye: “lack of foresight.”
Ecologists, however, have a more legitimate beef. “One of my many pet peeves,” notes Terence Ball of Phoenix, “concerns people who speak of President Bush and others ‘hurting the ecology.’ What they mean is ‘hurting the natural environment.’ ” Nancy Eldblom, a field botanist in Potsdam, New York, says, “Here’s an example of ‘stealing’ an entire branch of science: using ecology, the life science ‘concerned with the interrelationship of organisms and their environments,’ to mean the environment generally.”
My call: if you’re discussing that branch of biology dealing with the way living organisms relate to their surroundings, use ecology, rooted in the Greek for “dwelling.” If you’re talking about air or water pollution or global warming (now renamed “global climate change”), use environment, from the Latin viron, “circle.” (Lincoln: “I am environed with difficulties.”) If you just want to apply a political label, green will do fine.
“Equating theory with hypothesis is the booboo that boils the blood,” fulminates Joe Rosen of Bethesda, Maryland. Judith Weis, president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, agrees: “In science, the word theory refers to an underlying principle of observed phenomena that has been tested and verified. However, in common usage, it has come to mean ‘hunch’ or ‘speculation’ (what the word hypothesis means in science).”
While scientists who admire precision often treat the word theory as “a confirmed hypothesis,” lexicographers since 1706 have defined it as “a sup-position” far from proven. I recall sitting in a box with Henry Kissinger at a Washington football game; when the referee outrageously penalized the Redskins for pass interference, Henry rose to his feet, shook his fists and shouted, “On vot theory?” Strictly speaking, he meant hypothesis, but “only a theory”—as against demonstrated fact—is a longtime sense of the term.
Sports enthusiasts as well as scientists defend their linguistic turf. “Rail-birds bristle at the misuse of track record,” vents Dan Hely of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who reminds us that the track record for the mile and a half at Belmont is 2 minutes, 24 seconds, held by Secretariat since 1973. Yeah, adds David Hawkins of Brooklyn: “As a former horseplayer, I get exercised at the use of track record as in ‘the track record shows that he’ll make a good president.’ A track record is the fastest time ever recorded for a specific distance at a given track. The racing term that should be used is past performance.”
All this raises, not begs, the question: are specialists understandably miffed at the expropriation of their precise vocabulary by the generalist “meaning thieves”? Sure; but they don’t own the words and should stop being so myopic.
When Dr. Kissinger questioned the referee’s call with the phrase, “on vot theory?” his intended meaning may have been closer to “theorem” than either “theory” or “hypothesis.”
The rules of a game are axioms in a system of logic, and the decisions as to whether a violation has occurred, and if so, the penalty, are theorems derived by deduction from the rules. If the facts of the incident were in question, then the scientific terminology would be appropriate, but if it were a matter of the interpretation of the rules, then the language of logic would apply.
Andrew Raybould
Irvington,New York
It is indeed good to petition principals because school administrators need to be asked to do this kind of thing. Or am I committing petitio principii?
Edward M. Young
Pasadena, California
I became a bit concerned at your final sentence where you pointed out that specialists “don’t own the words and should stop being so myopic.” Apparently you felt that it doesn’t matter if the public takes a specialist’s term and uses it in a different way. Well, I’ll give you one example of how it can matter enormously.
When I lecture about this, I always have to point out that scientific theory is not merely speculation and, many times, is a confirmed fact. (An example of this is the “theory of flight,” about which all aviation students must learn. Although we use the word theory here, there is, of course, no doubt that airplanes can fly.)
So, in the case of evolution and the push to cast doubt on it in public schools, the public’s misuse of the specialist’s term is creating a situation in which large numbers of people are at risk of becoming, to varying degrees, scientifically illiterate. That’s not merely myopia; that’s outright blindness to mankind’s impressive scientific progress, the methods we use to achieve that progress, and the folly of impeding that progress in the future!
Matthew Bobrowsky, PhD
Challenger Center for Space Science Education
Alexandria, Virginia
G
Galumphers.In a review of the latest work of the modern dancer Mark Morris, Anna Kisselgoff, the New York Times dance critic, used a verb of great piquancy: “Mr. Morris galumphs with charm.”
Alice Cheang, writing in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, used it to describe a belly-rubbing self-caricature by the poet Su Shih: “This leisurely rambler galumphs merrily through the woods in pursuit of a view of the ‘tall bamboo.’” In the Los Angeles Times, Susan Spano reported from Costa Rica about a sea turtle: “It’s a big black blur in the shallows that starts to take shape as it galumphs up the beach on powerful front fins ill suited to terrestrial locomotion.”