TICTH the growing use of the bastard terms 'ramp(ed) up', and 'uptick', both of which frequently appear in the Meeja, especially in relation to The Plague.
Why can't They simply use that perfectly good word 'increase', or a suitable previously known synonym?
I think it's more because I see it as business-speak, along with phrases like reach out, touch base and leverage (when used as a verb), all of which I'm inclined to avoid.
I'll go along with that, BF! I'm not sure why, but IMNSHO "upturn" is all right, but "uptick" most definitely isn't.
"Uptick" actually has a legitimate original meaning, coming from the device called a stock ticker that prints the value of stocks in the stock exchange. Auntie Google will tell you all about it. I agree about 'reach out' - unnecessary and plainly wrong.
Well, you have to think outside the box (under the blue sky, natch) as there is an elephant in the room - not going forward (lost the roadmap) nor being ramped up (too heavy). All this, of course is unprecedented.
I have a long list of these begun when I was working back in Scotland a few years ago. May I offer 'dis-benefit'? 'de-risk'? (both from the former British Energy). The current list runs to four pages.
Someone wrote a letter in the Times a few years ago. They'd gone to a shop seeking a certain product only to be told that it was no longer available as it had been "de-ranged".
This obtains a whole other level of horror when you insert these words in a conversation in another language. "Disruptive" was already an ungood word in English business speak. Carried over into French, for example, it is appalling.
Oddly enough, this reincarnated discussion opens with a word that has earned a place in the ST black list:
System: Any simple, uncomplicated, everyday object, like a can of paint or a washing line, is advertised as a system these days. Just use the word whenever you feel like it. Nobody pays any attention to it any more. It has lost its meaning.
Unsuccess means 'Lack of success, failure; an instance of this.' Its first recorded usage was by Sir Philip Sidney, in Arcadia, in 1586.
Important as Sidney is to the history of English literature his word choice and style are not always models to be emulated.
Heh, there may have been others, unrecorded, before him. There were others after. My point was simply that it's not new. And if it were commonly used and accepted in today's society, people would be fine with it. The issue seems more to be with it being previously unheard, and so sounding weird and wrong.
No idea, as I've not even come across it, but words often come in and out of fashion. And often revived words, along with new words, have a slight variance in shades of meaning. I'd imagine there are areas between the binary opposites of failure and success, and I wouldn't assume unsuccess to mean failure, any more than I'd assume unfailure to mean success.
Though the English language is so full of synonyms anyway, I'm not even sure why words are spurned on the basis that there's another word meaning the same. It's hardly a language characterised by simplicity and minimalism!
I remember a lot of people grumbling about the term 'to gift' when it became popular with shops. People were saying it wasn't a real word, that it had just been invented as a sales thing, and why use 'gift' as a verb, when there is a perfectly good verb 'to give.' A few people then pointed out that 'gift' is more specific than give, as give doesn't always mean 'to give as a gift'. And that gift has been used as a verb from the 1600s, so it's hardly new. Not sure if people still have a problem with the verbing of gift, but I haven't heard anyone complain about it for years now. I've even seen some of the people who initially complained about it now happily using it!
I reserve my caution for older targets, such as "just". It is occasionally useful, but much overused (not only in prayers) so I try to omit it from my speaking and writing.
I reserve my caution for older targets, such as "just". It is occasionally useful, but much overused (not only in prayers) so I try to omit it from my speaking and writing.
I've never heard 'uptick.' But I don't have a TV, so I think many of these vocabulary trends pass me by. I learn more of the urban dictionary type expressions, especially from working with young people. The most recent I came across is wig, which some students use a lot simply to mean 'great.'
AIUI, "uptick" comes from the stock market, where "upticks" are price increases. The tick size is the quantization of the price of a stock, so an "uptick" is an increase in price by (at least) one tick.
I remember a lot of people grumbling about the term 'to gift' when it became popular with shops. People were saying it wasn't a real word, that it had just been invented as a sales thing, and why use 'gift' as a verb, when there is a perfectly good verb 'to give.' A few people then pointed out that 'gift' is more specific than give, as give doesn't always mean 'to give as a gift'. And that gift has been used as a verb from the 1600s, so it's hardly new. Not sure if people still have a problem with the verbing of gift, but I haven't heard anyone complain about it for years now. I've even seen some of the people who initially complained about it now happily using it!
I once told the Kirk Session it was time to get rid of a piano so warped that it was untuneable. Up pipes one old soul, “You cannae get rid of that piano, it’s gifted.” To her gifted meant more than given. It meant given in such a way that you had to keep it in perpetuity in memory of the giver. I seem to remember that I replied along the lines of “It is given to us. Only people can be gifted.”
I've never heard 'uptick.' But I don't have a TV, so I think many of these vocabulary trends pass me by. I learn more of the urban dictionary type expressions, especially from working with young people. The most recent I came across is wig, which some students use a lot simply to mean 'great.'
I don't own a television either, but here it on NPR and read it in the paper. Seems to be common newspeak in the US.
Comments
Why can't They simply use that perfectly good word 'increase', or a suitable previously known synonym?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick
Or maybe I just have too much imagination...
Churchspeak has its own terms, too, such as 'missional', but that's perhaps for another thread...
O for plain Anglo-Saxon!
"Uptick" actually has a legitimate original meaning, coming from the device called a stock ticker that prints the value of stocks in the stock exchange. Auntie Google will tell you all about it. I agree about 'reach out' - unnecessary and plainly wrong.
Backformed from the well-established 'unsuccessful'?
I hope it won't unsucceed in its wossname...
So perhaps not a neologism. More a revival.
System: Any simple, uncomplicated, everyday object, like a can of paint or a washing line, is advertised as a system these days. Just use the word whenever you feel like it. Nobody pays any attention to it any more. It has lost its meaning.
So the consensus of this thread is that we shouldn't invent new words. And by this post we shouldn't use old ones either.
I can see this forum becoming much quieter in the very near future, unless it stops being text-based and becomes more open to interpretive dance.
Heh, there may have been others, unrecorded, before him. There were others after. My point was simply that it's not new. And if it were commonly used and accepted in today's society, people would be fine with it. The issue seems more to be with it being previously unheard, and so sounding weird and wrong.
Though the English language is so full of synonyms anyway, I'm not even sure why words are spurned on the basis that there's another word meaning the same. It's hardly a language characterised by simplicity and minimalism!
I remember a lot of people grumbling about the term 'to gift' when it became popular with shops. People were saying it wasn't a real word, that it had just been invented as a sales thing, and why use 'gift' as a verb, when there is a perfectly good verb 'to give.' A few people then pointed out that 'gift' is more specific than give, as give doesn't always mean 'to give as a gift'. And that gift has been used as a verb from the 1600s, so it's hardly new. Not sure if people still have a problem with the verbing of gift, but I haven't heard anyone complain about it for years now. I've even seen some of the people who initially complained about it now happily using it!
I reserve my caution for older targets, such as "just". It is occasionally useful, but much overused (not only in prayers) so I try to omit it from my speaking and writing.
(Or "without which I could do"?)
Really, really...?
Therefore the consensus of this thread is that we shouldn't invent new words...
Is that better?
I once told the Kirk Session it was time to get rid of a piano so warped that it was untuneable. Up pipes one old soul, “You cannae get rid of that piano, it’s gifted.” To her gifted meant more than given. It meant given in such a way that you had to keep it in perpetuity in memory of the giver. I seem to remember that I replied along the lines of “It is given to us. Only people can be gifted.”
I don't own a television either, but here it on NPR and read it in the paper. Seems to be common newspeak in the US.
"silver lining"