#359 Malapropriate

More than once I’ve had occasion to bemoan the degeneration of our language. I’m always interested when a word changes, or at least takes on a new meaning. Chairman has become chair, for instance. A confusion of the position with an inanimate object in an attempt to degender-ize. Degender it? More like degenerate. What are we to do with salesmen. Are they now just sales?
So it was with great consternation the other day that I listened to an individual talking about another individual who had died, you know, gone to the other side, pushing up daisies, delivered to that great pizza parlor in the sky, took a fast train to eternity, and Etc. And I do me etcetera not the bastardized ex-cetera, which I only use when I get tired listing my former wives. Euphemisms for death confirm my theory that the more uncomfortable we are with a word the more substitutes we have for it. Compare the number of words you can think of for a certain portion of the male anatomy with how many words there are for “rice.” Anyhow, this guy said this dead guy had passed. I didn’t get it at first. Frankly, I was a little confused because I have been around people at the moment of expiration. And pass is often what the do. In the sense of various things being released from their now lifeless bodies. And I’m not talking about souls. So it was briefly disconcerting to hear someone talk of another’s death as him having passed. Quickly however, I deconstructed the phrase and associated it with the earlier used and longer euphemisms of death, passing away and passing on. English, much to Asian tech support trainee’s regret, is a language of shortcuts. If one word can be made to convey various subtleties of meaning then by all means let’s employ it to do so. Why go to the trouble of introducing prepositional phrases when just using the verb will do? “Passed on to the other side” can just become “passed on” which can now be shortened even further to “passed.” Forget for a moment its association with gas. 21st century American English now accepts the universality of the word fart in polite company. Although the preacher’s wife my still pass out is you pass the actual gas in question. She will not however, be likely to get the vapors at the use of the word. There’s a good example of a word shifting meaning with the addition of a different preposition. Passed on is completely different from passed out. Worse, at least to football fans, is the confusion with the quarterback’s favorite yardage advancing tool, passing itself, as opposed to running and kicking. When a quarterback passes for a touchdown we rejoice and in the wake of his triumph at the goal line we dance on the grave of the opponent’s hopes. And that’s a grave matter indeed. As we hope our playoff aspirations come to pass.
America, ya gotta love it.