Category Archives: Now trending

Observing and all too often criticizing language trends

Upcycling

Now trending, as they say in media far less long-winded than I am, is “upcycling” – taking discarded or undervalued material and pushing it up the value ladder. While I can appreciate the conversion of old rubber tires into sturdy sandals, I have some problems with upcycling language. Take a look at this sign, which turns a regular old cup of coffee into something else:

Small batch?

I guess “small-batch” is one of those terms you’re supposed to see as worth at least a dollar more per cup. After all, “small” implies that most people are excluded. The fact that this sign appears on a worldwide chain of coffee shops is irrelevant, though ironic. And speaking of “shops,” note the upcycling of this name:

Add two letters and double the price.

Here’s another, for those of you who slap some polish on their fingertips (if that) and assume they’re ready for the runway:

Design team?

Pause for a moment to pity the team-less. To console themselves, they can go to a bar. Or, as the next sign indicates, they can visit a “taproom” where they have “craft beer” and, if I’m being grammatically picky (and I always am), a “craft kitchen,” whatever that means. Nowadays, “craft beer” frequently carries about as much meaning as “small batch,” given that conglomerates have taken over many of what used to local beer companies that really did make small batches.

Not to belabor the point, which is already on overtime, here’s a sign that eschews (1) patriotism or (2) common sense by advocating “European Wax,” which is either a style of hair removal or a sticky product of bees residing abroad:

What’s wrong with American wax?

I think I’ll stay home, make a small batch of coffee, and drink it in my craft kitchen. You’re welcome to join me.

Didn’t we win that war?

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It’s been a long time since I studied American history, but until recently I was under the impression that we’d won the Revolutionary War. If we did, the Upper East Side apparently hasn’t gotten the message. Check out this sign from one of the local luxury food stores (yes, in this part of town there are several), which shall remain nameless to protect the pretentious:

Bespoke? Really?

I’m not going to touch the “dissappoint,” misspelled words being beneath my notice (usually), but it is a nice touch. This sign first appeared as a simple sheet of paper, printed by someone who hadn’t worried about the wavy red spellcheck line under what should read “disappoint.” About a week ago the store had the sign framed and mounted under a container of melon cubes. The busy employees don’t have time to read the sign aloud, so I can’t make a joke about someone who “misspoke” about “bespoke.” Sigh. What I can do is compare “bespoke fruit baskets” to “custom-made” or “made-to-order” fruit selections. What’s the difference? About thirty bucks, give or take. It’s the British influence. Associate a word with Colin Firth’s accent, and the price goes up.

The same principle is at work with “Stonehenge Realty,” a name I see on any number of NYC buildings. I would keep the name to myself, for the same reason I’m reserving identification of the foolish fruit-seller, but in this case the name itself is the point. Now don’t get me wrong. I have visited Stonehenge (the real thing, not the apartment buildings), and I’ve marveled at its power and history. But in New York? Can’t you just picture a real estate agent, Armani on and portfolio ready, extolling the virtues of living under a rock slab? “You’ll love the workmanship on this monolith,” the agent in my fantasy says, “and rocks are practically maintenance free. Of course, in December and June the Druids have access, but they add character, don’t you agree?”

Don’t think the tendency to turn to Britain for luxury references is purely a matter of money, with whoever names apartment buildings (and who does, do you know?) applying the names of economic powerhouses to their houses. If so, I’d expect to see the “Beijing” or possibly the “Riyadh.” If they’re out there, I can’t locate them. Nor is it a former colony’s desire to show reverence to the mother country. If it were, someone would be living in the “Chiapas,” because we beat Mexico in a war also. Okay, technically it was Spain, but don’t quibble.

No, it’s cultural bias, plain and simple, the same impulse that drives the ratings for Downton Abbey into the stratosphere. The Yanks won the war, but the British won the peace.

That’s it for today. I’m off to high tea.

No problem? Problem!

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In the supermarket where I have shopped for years, I hand my money to the cashier, and she returns my change. “Thank you,” I say, as I always do. She replies, “No problem.” No problem? Yes, I know that it is not a problem for her to give me my money. The change belongs to me, and it’s her job to return it. How is there no problem in doing one’s job? I think all these things, but I don’t say anything because I’ve known her for years, and she’s a very nice lady. I walk out of the store wondering why the old response to thank you, which is you’re welcome, has faded and why no problem has taken its place.

I have a couple of theories. The swiftest glance at the news immediately reveals that “problem” is the word of the day, every day, in pretty much every part of the world. I don’t know how you feel, but increasingly I have the sense that I can effect very little change (of money or anything else). Perhaps no problem has become a way of saying that yes, in this area I’m in charge, and there’s no problem I can’t fix. The tiny assertion of control in this sense can be powerfully comforting.

Another possibility arises from the fact that customers in New York City are not known for their placid, patient demeanor. A “New York minute” lasts about five nanoseconds, and the chin-out, baseball-cap- twisted-backwards style of confrontation was invented here — or, if not invented, at least perfected. So thank you may be a nice change, a respite in the semi-mythical land of no problem. Maybe no problem is short for I have no problem with you, though I do have problems with pretty much everyone else.

You’re welcome may have lost favor because it comes from a different time and emotional place. Perhaps it implies that you are here, and I’m glad you’re here, and you are welcome to this service, however small. In this struggling economy, that’s a good statement for a business owner to make. But it’s a stretch for staff who are overworked (how many layoffs have dumped additional tasks on remaining employees?) and underpaid (where did unions go?). Gratitude for having a job may be overwhelmed by anger at the amount of work and compensation.

I can’t leave this topic without mentioning the equivalent terms in Spanish, as I’ve just returned from a week in Madrid. “Gracias” is the Spanish word for “thanks.” The root word is related to “grace,” “gift,” “ease,” and “humor.” The response in Spanish is “de nada” (“of nothing,” literally) or “nada” (“nothing”). A variation is “no hay de que” (“there’s nothing to speak of”). Gracias implies that the person being thanked has been given something joyful. The responses signal that really, nothing much happened. In other words – there’s no problem.

For the record, I favor a return to you’re welcome. I’d like to believe that the store employees want me there, and not just for my business. Yes, that’s delusional, but it’s also human.

A Name Too Far

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Some years ago I called for a moratorium on ‘n, the pseudo-contraction that’s supposed to take the place of and in expressions such as burgers’ n beer, wings ‘n fries, and other cholesterol-laden linguistic and culinary crimes. Nobody heard me and nothing changed in the public arena, perhaps because the only people present when I called for this were a bunch of English teachers who wouldn’t dream of substituting a grunt for a conjunction.

Allowing hope to triumph over experience, I’m now asking for another moratorium, this time on the invention of cutesy names for beer. Now, I don’t drink beer. I do, however, hang out at times in bars where good draught beer is served. I like watching people enjoy a glass of amber liquid that reflects the sunlight and casts a warm glow. At first, it was fun to read the bar menu and savor names that hadn’t been derived from corporations. Out with Miller, Pabst, Budweiser, and the like, I thought. In with Victory Hop Devil, London Pride, and other creative terms.

Melange a Trois with 3 Philosophers?

But things have gone too far. The unusual has become commonplace and thereby lost its luster. Moreover, the contrived names increasingly leave consumers scratching their heads. When the name column on the beer menu expands to accommodate three inches of letters, it’s time to pull back. Let Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hops Club Brand alone, please. Instead, describe what’s actually in the beer – wheat, blueberries (and by the way, who on earth would ever want blueberries with beer?), bitters, whatever.

I assume that this post will lead to a new trend in beer names, or, at the very least, a batch of Extra Grouchy Grammarian Stout.

A Phabulous Invention

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As a grumpy grammarian, I’m supposed to tsk-tsk changes to the language by anyone other than Shakespeare, but my reaction is more complex. I’ve been on the Internet since techies were trying to decide between “dot com” and “period com” to talk about websites. I sat on the sidelines when other grammarians waffled between “mouses” and “mice” for the plural of a computer mouse. Fortunately, the touchscreen showed up and rendered the issue moot.

I do object to the name of the latest must-have device, the “phablet,” a cross between a cellphone and a tablet, with, as far as I can tell, the worst features of each. Who named this device, which sounds like a tweeted tale by Aesop? A couple of people have claimed the credit or blame, depending on your point of view.

Yet I can’t help feeling that some computer terms have enriched the language. “The default is that we get up at 6:30 a.m.,” my early-bird husband says. “Time to reboot,” I’ll say when we’ve been stuck in a way of thinking that isn’t going anywhere. I love words that slip from the machine to real life. Soft boot, hard boot, and even humanware specialist are interesting concepts. I definitely need a hard boot on Monday mornings but a soft boot after work. As I try to unravel the directions for a new piece of software, explanations from a humanware specialist help. (Not a techie? A hard boot occurs when you turn the computer on and the whole thing starts up, having been off duty for some length of time. A soft boot resets part of the system of a machine that’s already running. A humanware specialist trains people to use technology.)

Then they are the prefixes. The lowercase i hasn’t been this popular since the first teen poetry magazine was published. Thanks, Apple, for giving us iPads and iPhones; I assume that iAddiction is next. Thanks, programmers, for popularizing kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, and peta- as prefixes for bytes. After mining the ancient Greek language, techies have turned to fabricated word parts. (One prefix, yotta-, pays homage to the Star Wars’ character Yoda.) The amounts these prefixes represent seem unimaginable, except that techies have not only imagined them but also attempted to make the terms comprehensible. Did you know that the sum of five exabytes equals the number of all the words ever said during the entire span of human existence? (Source: highscalability.com)

And in this age of ecology, who could object to recycling old words to describe new situations? Such repurposing builds bridges between virtual and ordinary reality. You don’t function well when you have a virus, for example, and neither does your computer. Sadly, most human infections can’t be countered by an antivirus regimen. We just have to accept the downtime. Oh, for an escape button!

Everything new will be old someday, and everything old does not necessarily return. But as you’re tapping a stylus on your tablet, spare a thought for the ancient scribe scratching on a wax tablet with a different sort of stylus. You’re both likely to have sore forearms and fingers, just as you’re both likely to change the language. And in the end, that’s mostly a good thing.

See you in the cloud.

Following Guest?

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Some years ago, I stood on Fifth Avenue waiting for the next convoy of buses to arrive. (FYI, Car People: New York City buses travel in packs, apparently under orders to stay within sight of another bus driver at all times.) I remarked to a fellow potential passenger that I was going to be late. “I can’t be late,” he replied. “I’m a physician. I’m ‘delayed,’ not ‘late.’” So I get why doctors have patients, because patience is what you need when your healer is attending to someone else’s life-threatening condition or waiting for public transportation.

My lawyer and accountant have clients, but the stores in my neighborhood have customers — or at least they used to (more about that later). Why the difference? The official definition of a client is someone who receives services. A customer, according to several dictionaries I consulted, pays for goods or services. The term client seems to elevate the service provider to the status of a professional, someone who’s chosen a career path and studied mightily for the qualifications to practice it. (Why practice, by the way? Haven’t they perfected their skills by now?)

I realize, of course, that value judgments are all over these words. Plenty of people who have spent years learning a craft or trade and decades pursuing it have customers. When I drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, for example, the hardworking people who run the place manage to remove all sorts of stains and spruce up my garments, all the while smiling at their customers and staying on the right side of the many laws that regulate their business.

Now “trending,” as they say on social media, is guest. Hotels used to have customers or clients, but now they have guests. Okay, you stay overnight somewhere, they take care of you and at least in theory try to make you comfortable. Those activities do fall into the category of hospitality, so I can live with guest when it comes to lodging. But employees at my favorite frozen yogurt place now bid the “following guest” to step up to the little scale to weigh each portion of empty but oh-so-tasty calories and compute the price. How am I a guest when I have to pay for this product? Should I extrapolate and charge for the asparagus at my next dinner party? I imagine the corporate expert who wrote the script for this frozen-yogurt franchise. “Let’s create a cozy atmosphere! Everyone will feel like a guest in our home and eat more yogurt,” they say in my fantasy, although how anyone could live with three flat-screen televisions displaying tween sit-coms and a color scheme that could most mercifully be called garish is beyond my comprehension.

My recommendation: Make everyone (patient, client, guest) a customer. Because, as we all know, the customer is always right.

Overpriced at . . .

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First all the simple prices (Shoes – $30) sprouted nines (Shoes – $29.99) in order to convince math-challenged customers that the product was more affordable because of a single missing penny. I made peace with that development, because who am I to question a marketing strategy? I deal with words, not numbers.

Next up on the sales horizon was the addition of the word price, as if we consumers thought that $29.99 represented the amount the store would pay the customer to take a pair of shoes off the shelf. Price $29.99 was a little too much information, but no harm done. The last price-straw, as far as I’m concerned, is an extra D. More and more, shoes are priced at $30 or $29.99, figures not adjusted for inflation.

In grammar terms, the cost of an item is attached to a participle (priced), a descriptive verb form. Why? Usually participles give you extra information: Jenny, hiking in stiletto heels, broke her ankle. The participle in that sentence is hiking. It’s derived from a verb (to hike), but it’s functioning as a description of Jenny. (The real verb in the sentence, in case you’re interested, is broke.) The participle tells you that Jenny didn’t break her ankle doing something noble, like running after a mugger or saving a baby from a burning building. The participle tells you that Jenny is either clueless (I thought we were going to have dinner at a four-star restaurant!) or just dumb (Who knew shoes wobbled in the wilderness?). Hiking serves a purpose in the sentence.

The participle priced at implies human activity without identifying the actor. Who did the pricing? You have to guess. It may be the boss: Our store manager, desperate for a promotion, priced the shoes at $30 so he could brag about his empty stockroom. Perhaps this participle is an attempt to distance store employees from consumer outrage: Don’t blame us. We just sell the things, which are priced at $30 by nameless bureaucrats in the main office who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing these shoes.

One thing is clear about this participle: priced at usually precedes a number that is much too high, considering the item it’s attached to. Yet somehow I doubt you’ll see overpriced at $30 or $29.99 anytime soon.

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