By Jim Hagarty
I have been fighting, it seems, for most of my adult life, against trendy words and phrases. I try not to use them, myself, although I’ve noticed I have adopted a few (that probably aren’t being used these days, anyway. This column is 10 years old). For example, I will say crazy stuff like “we’ve got to open up a dialogue” which I think is a $20 (plus 13 per cent sales tax) way of saying, “Let’s talk.” And I will admit, sorrowfully, however, that I have, on occasion, promised someone that I would “touch base” at some early future time.
But that’s it. Otherwise, literarily, I am pure as the driven snow (a crazy expression, I’ll admit, but one that somehow doesn’t bother me).
The object of my latest disfavour is the expression “moving forward.” I challenge you to read a major newspaper these days and not see these words (or the alternative, “going forward”) at least two or three times. For some reason, sports guys, especially NHL general managers, love it. “B.E. Moth will be a big part of our team moving forward,” says the GM. It’s spreading like yellow mustard in a field of barley. GM-A says it, GM-B picks it up and away we go. High-flying business folks love it too. Moving forward, going forward. It all sounds so positive. What sane person wants to be moving backward?
But as annoying as moving forward is becoming, there is another saying that is catching on – trending upward, so to speak. Now, this little beauty’s been around awhile and so far, has been used, again, to describe business projections and the results of surveys. But my jaw dropped the other day when I actually saw it applied to a human being, again on the sports pages. A hockey player was described as trending upwards. The speaker didn’t say his ability was trending upwards or that his career was trending upwards but that he was trending upwards?
I am not sure, perhaps some longtime acquaintances can verify this, but I don’t think I have ever trended upwards in my life. I don’t think I would even know how. Maybe when I die I’ll trend upwards. I hope I do.
Of course, you and I are well aware of the maddening practice of turning nouns into verbs. We do it so often now, no one even blinks an eye. A parent was a mom or dad. But now, to parent means to be raise a child. A common example from dozens that are now in use. Have you conferenced lately? Blackberried anyone (sounds painful)?
But I just about ran my car off the road a while back as I listened to a guest on a morning radio talk show complain that the Canadian music industry is not working hard enough to “incentivize” new recording artists. To me, to be incentivized would be to have your ability to smell perfume permanently impaired or to have suddenly lost all your pennies. But I think what the good, wise gentleman was trying to impress on his listeners (impress being the operative word) was that the Canadian music industry is not offering enough incentives to young artists to get them interested in recording. (Can l sneak in another radio one? Monetization. Yuk.)
But I’ve got to say, “It’s all good” is not so good. I was in a restaurant on Monday when a regular came in and remarked on the fact that the owner had to work the counter himself because he couldn’t find help on the long weekend. “It’s all good,” he smiled, when it was clearly not. He was dashing from fryer to freezer to till and having a very hard time holding it together. l wondered to myself what it would take for this gentle soul to ever suggest that it wasn’t all good.
And I have just about had it with good to go. I am of the opinion that whether or not it’s appropriate depends on when it’s used. After you’ve handed her your stool samples, the receptionist at the lab tells you cheerily that you’re “good to go.” Pardon my insubordination, but shouldn’t she have said, you were “good to have gone”?
Maybe it’s time for me to revive my plan to create my own language. Jimmish would have only about 500 words in its total vocabulary and 20 per cent of them would be swears words.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s not quite ready to run up the flagpole to see if it flies.
