Daffy definitions

Daffy definitions

If you've read my blog before, you will recall my frequent references to what I have dubbed  Parrot's Disease, that unfortunate practice of blindly copying what we see, read and hear without taking the time to question its validity or look it up to be sure it's accurate.


Today's lesson is nearly all about Parrot's Disease and how it has led to many words and phrases being used incorrectly. If you learn nothing else today, at least emerge more determined to be skeptical and look things up rather than blindly trusting the world. 


Perhaps the worst part of it all is the modern dictionary's willingness to accept too many of the daffy definitions cited below. Parrot's Disease is everywhere.


Here, in no particular order, are some of the most common daffy definitions I see as an editor:


1) Bemused -- Gee, it's so close to amused it must mean basically the same thing, right? NO! I am not bemused when I read a story in which bemused is misused.


Bemused has no connection whatsoever with being amused. It means to be confused, perplexed or bewildered, as in The veteran actor looked bemused as the young director berated him for his performance.


2) Anxious -- It is NOT a synonym for eager. If you are anxious, you are nervous, unsettled, worried, full of anxiety.

Wrong: He was anxious to enter the game and show the coaches what he could do.
Right: He was eager to enter the game and show the coaches what he could do.
Right: He anxiously awaited the results of the test, knowing that a bad grade would ruin his chances of a scholarship.

3) The lion's share is wrongly defined in virtually every dictionary. Why would I make such a bold statement? Because it does NOT mean the majority, most or even the overwhelming majority. It means ALL, as in 100%.


If you're going to borrow a phrase from a famous source, don't you have an obligation to acknowledge its meaning from that original source? I know someone will gripe that it's merely a case of a phrase evolving into a different meaning, something that happens frequently. But that's not the case here. It's simply a matter of butchering the phrase in the first place and distorting its true meaning, then Parrot's Disease sadly taking over as the butchered meaning becomes accepted.


What am I referring to? The phrase the lion's share comes directly from Aesop's Fables. 

 The lion in the fable proclaims that he merits ALL of the spoils of the hunt he takes part in with a cow, goat and sheep, or the lion's share, as his right considering he is the strongest and biggest of the hunters. He definitely isn't interested in sharing any of it. To him, the lion's share means 100%. NOT anything else.


And that is what the phrase should indicate whenever you use it.



4) Enormity -- The dictionary yet again lets us down by insisting that this word can sub for magnitude. It can't. Nor should it used, despite what some dictionaries say, to indicate size, as in enormous. It means (as least in proper newspaper usage) the quality of being wicked, evil, immoral, outrageous.

You can talk correctly about the enormity of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship in    Nazi Germany, but not the enormity of the decision that led a person to choose one college over another.


When people use enormity they nearly always intend to mean magnitude.

Right:  He recoiled when reading about the enormity of the Syrian government's gas attack on its own people. 
Wrong: The enormity of the crater surprised the scientists.
Right: He realized the magnitude of the moment as he made a decision on whether to send the nation to war.

5) Nonplussed -- The "non" seems to throw off a lot of people, who then surmise that it means "not plussed" or something like that and go on to use the word opposite to its true meaning. 


It means to be baffled, at a loss, in a quandary, as in The politician was nonplussed by the heckler's insistence in arguing such a trivial point in the agenda.

 
6) Disinterested -- It absolutely does NOT mean uninterested. You don't become disinterested in a movie once it gets boring. You become uninterested. The words are not synonyms. Yet again, the dictionary gets it wrong!


Disinterested means to have no vested interest in or selfish motives about something, or in other words to be impartial. A judge   should be disinterested in all sides of every case brought before him.


7) Irregardless -- No matter how many times you've seen this "word," here is the reality: It DOES NOT EXIST. The word you want is simply regardless. One more time: Irregardless is not a word.


8) Literally -- How I hate it when people literally use literally incorrectly. I heard someone foolishly say, "I literally exploded when I heard that." I wanted to reply, "Then what are you doing still alive?"

It does not mean    figuratively, as the foolish speaker used it. Or metaphorically. It means it happened exactly as described. And of course no person could literally explode and then be alive to talk about it.

Right: The professor literally spat on the host and walked out in the middle of the interview when he felt insulted.
Wrong: Nancy literally got the green light from the city to conduct the research. (Unless the city has a light that is the color green and it has some great significance in determining events, no one ever gets a green light from it.)
Right: China is literally a day ahead of us on the calendar.

9) Could care less -- Completely wrong in 99.99% of cases in which it is used. If you could care less, it means you are capable of caring less than you already do. That by definition means that you DO care somewhat, or else you wouldn't be able to care less. 

What you really mean is that you care so little about something that you could NOT care less, or could not care any less than you already do. By saying you care less, you are saying the opposite of what you mean.

Get it right! The term is could NOT care less (or couldn't care less).


10) Ironic -- Perhaps the most misused word on this list. It doesn't mean a peculiar coincidence. It's not one bit ironic that you run into a person three times in three locations in one day. Nor is it ironic to find something weird, strange, funny, paradoxical or interesting.


Something is ironic if it produces a result that is the opposite of what was intended or said. 



Wrong: The man won the lottery but ironically died before he could collect his winnings. 
Wrong: In a touch of irony, it rained during their wedding procession.
Wrong: It was ironic that she grew up in Chicago and ended up marrying a man who was a Chicago native, even though they met in Boston.
Right: The protesters decried the use of expletives 

   and sexually suggestive lyrics in the song, but the publicity from the demonstrations ironically helped the rapper sell five times more copies of his CD than before the protests began.

It's time to wrap it up. My next post will be focus on writing dates correctly. It's a much bigger problem than you think. Stay tuned ...