Category: psychology

The Disappointed Reader

RilalyLeave a comment

“I’m disappointed, and I just can’t hide it!” I whisper/shout to the author of the book I’m reading. “You had me. You really had me, and it’s almost painful hanging here.”

Hi, I’m whatever his name is, but you can call me what’s his face, and I love a great story. Some love money and power, some love their family, and some love a really good cheeseburger. I love the great story. I love them big and small, on a device, in a book, and in a mall. I love the story you told me last week about that big, hairy guy you saw in a tank top last Tuesday at Walmart who shouted something about the price of a 3-pack of Fun Pops. If it’s unique, funny, and complete, you might have me on the edge of my seat. I might ask you so many question that you’ll “Just let me tell the story for God’s sakes” me, because I love your details. I love them so much that you will probably joke that I focus on parts of your story no one ever has ever considered before. That’s just kind of what I do. I might ask you to repeat that word you just used to describe that 3-pack of Fun Pops fella, and I might even use it later. I want to be there with you, in your story. I want to love it, enhance it, and make it my own. My leading questions might even help make your story better. I’ve done it before, without intending to do so, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. 

I might be phony in a number of ways, but my love of a great story is authentic and organic. I’m not saying my passion is greater than anyone else’s. I’m saying, we all love spending some time in the hands of a great storyteller. We used to go to the town square to hear a great story, before that the amphitheater, and the rock opposite the storyteller. No matter where or when we heard, saw, or experienced the great story, the elements have not changed. That great, classic intro led us to that rock, and the perfect climactic ending almost made us forget the fascinating information in between. Some stories entertain, some educate, but the greatest storytellers of all time find a way to meld the two in an unforgettable tome. Some of us, most of us, don’t particularly care what we are at the end, as long we’re something. Which is why when I have the finished product of a master craftsman in my hands, and they drop the ball, it’s tantamount to an ugly divorce.

They can get me. I’ll give them that. These skilled wordsmiths, who are far better at their craft than I will ever be, can have me flipping pages rapidly, flopping around at night, hours after I’ve put the book down, wondering what they’re going to do to me next, and I’ll probably be talking about those progressions the next day. When the novel is that good, I become so obsessed that I’m thinking about the possibilities throughout the day, into the night, and in my dreams. Then, boom! Nothing.

What? Why is that bookmark rotting in the place it’s been in for six months? After the flurried pace, why do I not care what happened to these characters now? It’s often so relative why we lose interest that it can be tough to pinpoint, but at some point, the author and the reader part ways on the best way to conclude this buildup.

I am a lot more patient with the author of a niche book that happened to cover a topic of particular interest to me. This book they wrote might be the only book they ever write, partake in, or have ghost written for them based on an interview. If that’s the case, my maniacal mind ask theirs, “Aren’t you afraid of losing the reader?” I try to frame my internal question in a very generous scope. They’re obviously not writers, but this product that they’re putting out has their name on it. I cut them an enormous amount of slack, in other words, but I searched for the topic of their book, so I’m obviously an eager customer. I read through the summary of the book, and it fit so well with what I was searching for that I decided to download a sample of it. Depending on the book, the sample is either the first tenth of the book. A song on the radio is a sample of an album in much the same way, the first tenth of a book is a sample of that book, right? It should contain the best writing that book has to offer. If I can barely make it through your sample, on a topic I’m inordinately interested in, the author’s writing must be terrible.

“You had me with the topic, and the summary, but your writing reads like that teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” My favorite writers can make the history of grills in Mattel’s Barbie fascinating. I don’t expect that level of mastery of powerful, provocative prose from every author, but in this particular case, they have a topic that I am dying to learn more about, and they can’t even write a decent enough sample to get me to purchase their book? The author, or ghost writer, just gets lost in the description of the inanity, but even inanities can come to life with powerful prose. I’ll admit, I’m a little bitter in the sense that I can’t get published, and this guy has, but that doesn’t affect my reading selections. I might be hyper-critical when it comes to writing, but it’s only because I know I can do better. It’s not because I think I’m more intelligent, talented, or gifted in anyway. I’m just more demanding of myself. I read through what I’ve written with the fear that with any given sentence or paragraph, I can lose the reader. I’m probably more paranoid than most writers.

With master storytellers, I fall head over heels in love with their characters. I admire some from afar, embodied others, and sympathize and empathize with the rest. My favorite authors know how to create and substantiate characters, and some of them know how to juggle them in a gargantuan tome. 

In the introductory phase of the huge novel, the author’s juggling skills mesmerize, as the author introduces the MacGuffin to each character in a variety of unique ways. (The MacGuffin is a term for the literary device authors use in their plot to motivate the characters to act. The MacGuffin can be the monster in a horror story, a ring in Lord of the Rings, a glowing object in Pulp Fiction, and as filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock said, “What everybody on the screen is looking for but the audience doesn’t care about.”) The MacGuffin provides the conflict, the goal, and the theme of the interactions between the characters. Yet, even in the best novels, the MacGuffin is almost irrelevant, and we see this at the end when the MacGuffin is finally defeated in an anticlimactic and unceremonious manner.

The MacGuffin doesn’t need too many details, as the best authors allow us to paint their MacGuffin in our mind’s eye. We also see need for a simplified MacGuffin in those stories that involve intricate detail that might play well in the author’s mind, and some detail-oriented readers, but for the rest of us a simple tale of good vs. evil will do. I’ve witnessed the opposite, where a MacGuffin received painstaking detail. The author was/is a painter also, so he provided intricate detail of the visual elements of the monster, and rich details regarding their lives, values, and goals. It was so much that it was too much, and my bookmark remains in the 2/3rds of that description to this day.

I stressed the word defeated, because most modern authors try to avoid having their MacGuffin defeated. Modern authors don’t enjoy having their readers think in terms of good vs. evil or triumph vs. failure. Winning and losing is not a part of their equation, as it’s too simplistic or something, and they fear that it paints their narrative as a game or sporting event. Some authors even introduce the delusional elements of victory by having the characters defeat the MacGuffin, only to have it rise again in the midst of their celebration. When this happens, we know the author is mocking the simple-minded notion of victory, as we are only three-fourths the way through the novel. We also know to prepare for a complicated, winding effort the characters will employ to form a collusive effort that helps them overcome whatever personal, inner demons they may have had that caused them to be susceptible to their fears of the MacGuffin, or the unknown in general. In Stephen King’s It, for example, Pennywise mocks the groups’ efforts to defeat It. In It’s mockery, it actually instructs one of the individual members on the best way to defeat It. I don’t know if King struggled with the best way to convey the information necessary to kill It, but I have to think it would be better that this information comes from anyone else but the MacGuffin. It just seemed odd that It, or anything else would aid in their own destruction. If they’re evil, perhaps they should lie to the good guys, but telling them how they should approach an attack next time kind of dispels the notion that they’re truly evil. It’s complicated and deep and some of the times, readers wonder if it might be more fun if the author dropped all the pretentious efforts to please their peers and the critics and just wrote a simple novel of good defeating evil. 

In the early stages, the characters encounter the MacGuffin individually, and they’re overwhelmed by it. “We obviously cannot do this alone,” the characters say throughout the narrative in individual ways. One important trait of the typical monster story is that the meager human cannot do it alone … if at all. The methods of warfare we’ve developed are inferior to the ways of the MacGuffin, and the creativity of the human being is incredibly primitive in reference to its power. For these reasons and others, many, many others, I could not write a compelling monster narrative, for my tale would be far more interested in the human ability to overcome. My tale would be less interested in the power of the monster and more in the resolve most humans find when they’re backed into a corner. A theme of my tale would be, you think the badger is deadly when backed into corner, try a human. We might not think much of our fellow humans on most days, but while we don’t have the claws of the badger, the jaws of the alligator, or the ferocious strength of the bear, there’s a reason we sit atop the animal kingdom, the human brain. The best you’ll ever see of a human happens just after they’re backed into a corner. When they’re so desperate that they think their lives will end, they will find some levels of ingenious resolve they didn’t even know existed. My characters want to live, and they will do whatever is necessary to see one more day. If the gun doesn’t work, and it doesn’t in an overwhelming majority of most monster stories, they’ll try something else, and then something else to help them survive. Such a theme would not play well in most monster movies, because at all points in between, and with very specific characters, it’s not about them, and they usually do nothing but lay there in the spot the director designated for the death scene. If they fight or thrash about a bit, it’s often a minimal fight. More often than not, all they do is scream.  

After they experience nothing but failure in the face of the MacGuffin, they seek others who’ve experienced similar, but different, failures in their respective interactions with it. They learn a lot about it and themselves in the process, and they bring that knowledge to the other group, who have uncovered their own truths. They then use that combined knowledge to carve out some temporary peace for themselves. In doing so, the author effortlessly funnels these characters together in a quest to defeat, uncover, or discover a truth about the MacGuffin. The ebb and flow of this part of the narrative is often the most engaging and provocative part. If it wasn’t so engaging, I would consider dropping most novels at this point, because the buildup, for me, is the part that builds the obsession. 

At some point, the author needs to make an initial reveal, a tease, and a summation of what the author has spent hundreds of pages foreshadowing. The reveal involves a progressed, unexplained truth about the MacGuffin. The quality author teases this out, and they leave us in some doubt about whether or not it is in fact a truth. There are relative truths each character discovers and even though the author depicts their characters as weak, the narrative is still about them, and their perspective. It is about the MacGuffin, but it’s not.  

In this reveal, we’re not entirely sure what happened, but we know that one of the novel’s most beloved, but expendable side characters, (the proverbial red-shirted Ensign from Star Trek), is dead. Some believe the guy in the red shirt did something ill-advised, and they place much of the blame for his death on him. This permits them to continue to believe the MacGuffin is benevolent, as they continue to argue with those who view the MacGuffin as vindictive and vengeful (a hint at various interpretations of God, Satan, or some confusing hybrid of both). This scene also permits the author to reveal the powers of the MacGuffin, a power that will cause the reader to fear it, but the power will later be diminished by whatever the group of characters chose to define it.

One character, often the militaristic lunatic, steps forward to demand revenge or retribution. He wants to eradicate the MacGuffin from the Earth as a result of the beloved side character’s death. The militaristic side character also seeks to disguise his bloodlust as a form of protection, under the proviso that he could be next, or we could, and he believes in the tooth for a tooth response to what he perceives to be the MacGuffin’s deadly aggression. The majority disagree and side with the saner main character who suggests the group needs a more complex, less violent resolution. 

The characters have obeyed the rules, based on the nature of the MacGuffin they’ve collectively discovered thus far, but they’ve also found some loopholes. If they do this, while doing that, there will be no ramifications from the MacGuffin. There are rise and fall and fall and rise, a rise, fall, rise, or a fall, rise, fall arcs throughout to build the tension. The characters learn from their mistakes. 

The various arcs appeal to just about everyone, as we try to keep an open mind. At some point, we begin to identify with the problem-resolution ideas of one character over the others. We also enjoy the love-interest angle two of the leaders developed, how the sick child became sick, and if it can be attributed to the MacGuffin in some way, but we keep coming back to the ultimate resolution. 

For those of us who have read a number of modern books, and watched such storylines play out on current TV shows and movies, we pretty much know where 99% of them are headed. We might disagree with the angle the characters choose, but more that, we know that eventually the author will have to choose sides in this dilemma, and we always know what side the more modern authors are going to take. The only drama left, is how is they are going to get there.

They often lead us into “their” position with numerous, failed efforts by the lunatic, military type to wipe the MacGuffin off the face of the planet with some drastic overreach that will affect life on Earth. We are to side with the intellectual pacifist, normally employed as a scientist, a professor, or a reporter in most modern stories. This is where the gist of the story becomes clear. The MacGuffin is not bad, or evil in the simplistic terms we use to define good vs. evil. Is the white shark bad, the bear, or the tiger? No, they just want to eat, but in our cartoonish narratives, we often depict them as mean, and they always have an otherworldly growl that shakes us to our bones. Plus, there is a now a complex, rational explanation for the death of the beloved side character, and any related activities that follow. The whole idea that the MacGuffin was a bad entity, was a relative term defined by the obnoxious, military man who just wants to blow stuff up. The more rational scientist, professor, or reporter finds another way that turns out to be correct. They find a way to communicate with the MacGuffin. This narrative often dismisses the fact that some MacGuffins we encounter in life are bad, and  in real life we shouldn’t be so naïve as to believe every MacGuffin is misunderstood. We might meet a real bad guy in life, our MacGuffin, and if we choose to try to talk to them, or advise counseling, they’ll be back to do what they did to us, to someone else. This part of the narrative is often the whole purpose of the artist starting this project, to have the author’s side win. Logic often prevails, but the conflicted logician may employ some violent tendencies, as a subtle ode to those who enjoy some level of violence in every storyline, or to display the main character’s progressed desperation, but it’s often directed at the the real bad guys of this narrative, the irrational, militaristic bad guys who won’t listen to her.

Again, I could not write a modern monster story, because my problem solving techniques would be too simplistic, anti-climactic, and a little boring. My resolution would probably involve a gun. One of my characters would pull out a gun and shoot the MacGuffin dead. If that didn’t work, my character would shoot it again, multiple times, until it is dead. If that didn’t work, the character would try something else. This resolution would probably bore most modern monster book readers, because they prefer conflict resolutions that are deep, complicated, and multidimensional. My methodology is if one thing doesn’t work, try another. Gather all of the most brilliant minds, militaristic and otherwise, and try to develop a master plan of attack. In the modern monster movie, nothing works. I understand that leads to some compelling drama that defines their desperation, but this cliché often leads the authors to fall prey to some formulaic storytelling. 

It’s not that I want the author to write a story that employs my fundamentals, or that I want my side to win, it’s the eventual formula of these stories I find so deflating. Most modern authors play it safe with a formula loaded with so many clichés, tropes, and stereotypical characterizations that I eventually put the book out of its misery. I empathize with the difficulty of adding it all up to a fiery crescendo, but how many endings just crush? I’d say very few. I don’t know if some authors write too many books, or if they overcome blocks by just writing what amounts to the same endings every time out, but their formulas often leave me wanting. 

“What would you have done different?” defenders of the modern author might ask. It’s not my project, and I’m not the skilled author that brought the reader, almost effortlessly to point ‘R’, in the ‘A’ to ‘Z’ progression. They fumbled the ball three-fourths the way through is what I’m saying, and they had such a healthy drive going. “Do you think you could’ve done better?” No, but I would’ve done it different. I’ve given up on the big ‘O’, originality, because it’s almost impossible to be original nowadays, and an artist could go mad in the effort. Doing different is not always original, but the author could vie for unique. Every modern author, it seems, travels from ‘R’ to ‘Z’ in almost the exact same way. Why wouldn’t you take a right at ‘T’ or a left at ‘V’ to surprise me with something different? There’s just so much same-same going on in most novels that I can predict where they’re headed.

I still love the great story, and I probably always will. I might ‘X’ some authors out for the predictability of their formula, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on the art of storytelling. I’m always on the lookout for the next great story from the next great author who shocks me with their innovative approach, unique techniques, their style, and a crushing crescendo, but I’ve been beat down by those who fall back on the tried and true. 

The Origins of the Pejoratives

RilalyLeave a comment

“You, my friend, are what they call a joker,” I told Shelley Macintosh. “A real joker.”

“A joker?” Shelley asked. “What’s a joker? Did you mean a jokester? Do you mean joker, as in the playing card, or the bad guy from Batman?”

“A joker,” I said, measuring her reaction to see if she was playing with me. “A joker. A person who jokes around a lot. I don’t know. Everyone says it. It’s a common phrase everyone uses it to describe a person who jokes around a lot. Are you messing with me? You’ve never heard of the term joker before?”

After some back and forth, we established the fact that Shelley never heard the word used in that context before. As incomprehensible as I considered it that a woman who was roughly my age, who grew up in the area I did with all the same colloquialisms, and watched the same shows growing up, never heard the word, I then wondered where I did. 

Etymologists trace the historical origins of words, but their professional focus remains on more formal and serious words. There is some less serious research into the history of vulgar vocabulary, but a term that is nestled somewhere in  between, like joker, doesn’t receive much focus from either party. Joker might not be a great example of a pejorative, as it doesn’t really belittle anyone, put anyone in their place, offend anyone, or hurt their feelings, but put in a certain context, “You’re a real joker, aren’t you?” it could be confrontational. Those words could be fighting words, but we’d have to frame them up with the right face to get that done. 

We know that the Ancient Egyptians had court jesters, that could be called jokers, to entertain their pharaohs dating back to the Fifth Dynasty, and the Romans employed them to provide comic relief for their leaders, but how did the term joker weave its way through the timeline to my mouth in the 20th Century?  

How does a word, any word, travel through time? Some are fascinated by this, as evidenced by those who choose professions in various professional language specialist arenas, but to those of us who choose more common professions it’s so boring we don’t want to devote any of the precious time we have left on Earth to it. In principle, it’s interesting to wonder how a word might travel from Ancient Greece to modern English, but the research is not as fascinating as readers might think. I’ve had friends drop words and phrases I found fascinating. “Where did you hear that word?” I wondered aloud thinking that that word was exclusive to the first person I heard use it. I did my research, and I found it personally fascinating to learn that some of these words and phrases predate me by hundreds to thousands of years. Fascinating, right? Wrong, people don’t go so far as to yawn in my face, say “who cares?” or drop a playful characterization of my bookishness on me, but they don’t find the history of words nearly as fascinating as I do. 

In my research, I found that a large number of the words and phrases we use every day derive most often from various stages of Latin, English, Ancient Greece, The Bible, and Shakespeare. Look up your favorite word, and you’ll find that most of the words and phrases you use every day are derived from one of those sources, and the reason we stress derived is that as these words travel through time they modify slightly in meaning, totally transform, and on some very rare occasions remain somewhat in tact, in spelling and meaning, for thousands of years.  

Most don’t call their peers out on their word choices in the manner Shelley did, because why would we? Unless it involves a swear word, or some unique way of expressing emotions, it’s just not that interesting to us. We also don’t call each other out on the origin of the more common words and phrases we use, because we operate on a certain, unspoken and conditional quid pro quo. “I’ll tell you what, I won’t call you out on these words and phrases you use,” we say without saying, “if you don’t call me out, because I don’t know anything about their origin either.” 

One important note, before we continue, is as Etymology.com points out, “etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what words mean, what they they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago, and how they’ve traveled through time. Etymology is a science that studies the history of a word. It is a subfield of linguistics, philology, and semiotics. Etymology also studies the word’s progressions from one language to another, how it changes from one language to another, its changes in form and meaning, and some semblance of its origins.” The best and most succinct definition of etymology is that it’s the history of a word. 

If this entire article is nothing more than retread for you, and you’re not only familiar but intimately knowledgeable about the general idea of etymologies, and if you have an unusual love of language and all of the manipulative power of a clever lexicon, my bet is someone, somewhere has already called you a nerd, a nincompoop, or a total nimrod.  

Nimrod: A slightly dim-witted individual, a dolt.

Etymology: There are more professional, professorial, and well-researched theories on the etymological origin of nimrod out there, and their tracings are all over the place, but we prefer the more childish, amateurish word-of-mouth theories that appeal to those who prefer Buggs Bunny to long-since deceased authors monkeying around with a term. The idea that one of our favorite Saturday morning cartoons had some influence on the language we share is just far more entertaining. 

The etymology of nimrod begins with The Great Nimrod (a name that can, apparently, only be mentioned with computer-enhanced reverb and some form of trumpet accompaniment). The Nimrod of Biblical lore was either the great-grandson of Noah (a man who built an ark), son of Cush, or Ham (depending on the source?), and the King of Shinar. Nimrod is also reputed to be the leader of the people who built the Tower of Babel in Shinar.  

Nimrod was considered “the first on earth to be a mighty man”. He was also considered one of the great hunters of his day and “a mighty hunter before the Lord”. Nimrod was such a mighty character in the book of Genesis 10:8–12 that there are some references that declare subjects of the kingdom of Assyria called it, “The Land of Nimrod” 1 Chronicles 1:10. 

Having said all that, we could assume that most considered Nimrod, the man, the myth, the legend beyond reproach, but anyone who knows anything about Looney Tunes knows that only made him prime for a satirical representation. For them, the rich tradition and folklore surrounding Nimrod made him the perfect analogy for their fumbling, stumbling hunter, Elmer Fudd.

In a 1948 episode called What Makes Daffy Duck, the brilliant and underrated comedic actor Daffy Duck refers to Elmer Fudd as “my little Nimrod”. To show how much the writers loved the characterization, they did it again, in a 1951 episode entitled Rabbit Every Monday in which they had Buggs Bunny refer to Yosemite Sam as “The Little Nimrod”. 

A young child, who knows nothing of the King of Shinar, or the first mighty man of Earth, might hear this term and decide to use it against her brother, the next time he he does something foolish. Her erudite parents might overhear this and ask her if she realizes she’s calling her brother a mighty man. To clarify, they might tell the tale of the great Nimrod, and she might pause while soaking all this in. My guess is the next time her brother messes up, however, nimrod will be the first word out of her mouth, because there’s something uniquely satisfying about the sound of the word, and its unique power might derive from its uniqueness. Not many people place nimrod in their regular pejorative rotation, but when they do use it, it just feels deliciously degrading.

Chances are the daughter didn’t know where she heard the term nimrod, but everyone from my era knows that not only did we watch Looney Tunes a lot, but our local programmers ran the cartoon so often, showing so many reruns, that we could almost recite each short in real time, and we all know the conscious and subconscious power of repetition. 

The brilliance of these particular Looney Tunes’ shorts lies in the idea anytime a duck or a rabbit are confronted by a human, or a hunter, they should experience fear and intimidation. As animals at the the bottom of the food chain, they know that their lives are always on the line. The humor lies in their mockery of that principle, in general, and Elmer Fudd in particular, for his stature as a mighty hunter before the Lord. Thus, the writers of Looney Tunes almost single-handedly, redefined the term nimrod for an era and beyond as someone who has an unusual belief in oneself in principle, only to show he is actually so bad at it that we question his mental acuity. 

So, the next time someone attempts to belittle you with the pejorative nimrod, ask them if they’re referring to “The mighty hunter before the Lord,”, the King of Shinar, or Elmer Fudd. As much as we all loved Elmer Fudd growing up, regardless his foibles, we might not be insulted either way.

Dunce: A slow-witted or stupid person. A pejorative term that refers to one’s inability to learn. Generations ago, a student who failed to learn, or exhibited a lack of discipline was often forced to sit in a decidedly prominent corner of the room, wearing a dunce cap, or cone. Dunce was, at one time, one of the worst pejoratives one could call another.

Etymology: Once seen as one of the most brilliant philosophical theologians of his day, John Duns Scotus’ philosophies, and teachings, garnered such a substantial following that his followers called themselves Dunsmen, or Dunsers, after the theologian’s middle name. Unfortunate for the Subtle Doctor and his followers, the Renaissance happened. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that sought to render all of the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity obsolete. The Renaissance involved so many changes in so many fields that it evolved into a cultural movement that eventually rendered Scotus’ teachings obsolete by “modern” standards. Those who ascribed to the new theories of the Renaissance developed such loyalty to the “modern” ways of thinking that they derided anyone who refused to modernize. As one of the most prominent adherents to classical modes of thought, John Duns Scotus and his followers, were singled out for ridicule. As such, proponents of the Renaissance called anyone who refused to modernize to the cultural changes happening around them, Dunsers. As anyone who knows about the history of words and pejoratives knows, some words are either purposely or accidentally mispronounced or altered over time for a variety of reasons, and Dunsers became dunces.   

Nincompoop: A nincompoop is foolish, an idiot, a bonehead, or a dope. This word is decidedly out-dated, old-fashioned, and rarely used anymore. If you’ve ever had someone call you a nincompoop, chances are that person has been eligible for Social Security for at least ten years. It’s not a compliment, but in the pantheon of pejoratives, it is not a wounding insult either. If you ever decide to use the pejorative on someone, the backlash might prove greater than the intended insult. Some suggest that the more common pejorative ninny derived from nincompoop, because people felt weird saying the complete word nincompoop. Although ninny wields far more power than nincompoop, it should be used judiciously, as the backlash could be just as severe. Although most of us have never heard of these two pejoratives, and even fewer have experimented with them in a pejorative sense, we caution people who might use such terms in the hopes of achieving some sort of retro-feel, because neither of them sound right, and there’s just no way that nincompoop can achieve the desired effect.   

Etymology: Some suggest this word is derived from the Latin legal phrase non compos mentis “insane, mentally incompetent” (circa 1600). Others deny this, because the Latin phrase lacks the second “N”. They say that nincompoop was probably derived from Nicodemus, which was used in French for “a fool”. Still others, suggest that it was probably just an invented word at some point.

That’s it, the latter. There’s no solid evidence on the etymology of this one, and the only time I remember hearing nincompoop delivered as an insult is when my great-aunt dropped it on me after I did something stupid. She said it with obvious exclamation points all over her voice, and she made the meanest face she could think of, but all she got out of me was laughter. I don’t know if hearing the last syllable coupled with the mean face drained it of all effectiveness, but it obviously achieved the opposite affect.  

Dolt: 16th century, Old English. Derived from dull, or dol. Middle English word dullen, meaning “to dull, make or become dazed or stupid.”

The progression to modernity has led dolt to mean a person who lacks common sense or the intelligence necessary to make good decisions in life. A dolt is different than a fool, however, as The Content Authority points out, as a fool is often educated and/or wise enough to make quality decisions but continues to do otherwise.

Bedlam: A scene or state of wild uproar and confusion. An outbreak of crazed insanity, that is not a riot. “We went to the concert the other night. A couple fights broke out on the floor, and it evolved into absolute bedlam before the authorities to regain control.” The housing unit of the pejoratives of yesteryear.

Etymology: Bedlam is a colloquial pronunciation of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, as in the name of the Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem. The hospital began as a priory, in 1247, changed to a hospital by 1402, and ultimately became a civic lunatic asylum by 1547, where it housed the insane. Most of the inmates, as they were called, were starved, shackled, and exhibited to the public in wild and frenzied states. Thus, bedlam became synonymous with frenzied, psychotic behavior. 

The proper name might be caught in transition in the title of John Davies’ 1617 publication of humorous poetry, “Wits bedlam —where is had, whipping-cheer, to cure the mad.”

The pejoratives on this list all have interesting, unusual, and noteworthy twists and turns throughout their history. Other pejoratives such as idiot, moron, imbecile and others are noteworthy not for their changes or meaning, but for their consistency through time. Some of these pejoratives existed in the B.C. (Before Christ) era. Think about that for just a second, before you yawn with fatigue, that pejorative you just called your sister was similar, if not the exact same word, a boy called his sister thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece. To my mind, the twists and turns and evolutions of words, through time, are just as interesting as the consistency of the pejoratives through thousands of years.  

It’s Just Gross to Say it’s Gross

RilalyLeave a comment

“You’re just gross,” Sheila said.

“I’m gross? Me?” I asked. Sheila confirmed she was talking about me, and she went through her assessment in detail, and I … I was not insulted.

“How could you not be?” How could I be? Had Sheila called me disgusting, revolting, repellent, or even stomach-churning, my shades of embarrassment might have blossomed, but gross? Gross is gone. It just is. Overuse and abuse have drained it of all value. Everything is gross now. In the ever-changing and relative world of the new and improved hygienic standards, everyone and everything is gross now, and if everyone is gross no one is.

“If you don’t do this, you’re gross.” “Doing that is just plain gross?” “And if you do that without doing this first, you could become absolutely gross.” Some of you might find it gross, but the rest of us don’t understand how all of these this and that’s not only fail the new hygienic standards but they’re gross. How is it gross? Define gross. 

“I’m glad you asked,” an arbiter of gross once responded. “If you do this without knowledge, you’re a little icky, but we’ll withhold judgment, because you might just be ignorant, and we’ll be happy to teach you. If we teach you, and you continue to do it, you’re gross my friend, and I won’t want to be around you anymore.”

Gross, thanks to the new and improved hygienic standard, is now the most used and abused word in the English language, and we’re all scrambling to develop exciting and new uses of it. One would think that someone might step up and say, ‘Okay, I understand he failed to abide by your prescribed steps to achieving hygienic excellence in a manner you’ve defined, but he’s not gross. How is he gross?’

We all thought we had a pretty firm grasp on gross, decades ago, but something happened. There are some very insightful and well-researched explanations of the word’s evolution, but I wanted to know what influenced my friends and my generation to start using and abusing this word. I don’t know if it started in the once-ubiquitous “As Seen on TV” infomercials depicting the absolutely miserable black & white, “Before” man using a traditional mop, but I think they contributed. Before the advent of cable, there used to be shows we were “forced” to watch. Check that, we were never “forced” to watch anything, but our antidote to insomnia was mindless TV, and nothing was more mindless than those 30-minute “As Seen on TV” infomercials. To enshrine their latest and greatest product in the halls of gloriousness, the marketing teams displayed for us a reasonable facsimile of us in black and white “before” videos. We knew the anguish of the traditional mop firsthand, but we had no idea that it was the bane of human existence that might, might have been have been the second worst infliction beset upon man, behind the gods subjecting Prometheus to the sentence of having a eagle eat his liver out for the rest of time. As chilling and horrific as those “before” videos were, they were not a condemnation of man, but an invitation to join the “after” woman, in her bright, colorized visage. On this woman’s face, we could see the science behind the land of milk and honey through her incredible, beaming smile. Her beaming smile didn’t intimidate us, but it led us to believe we could join her in the land the gospels promised for living a moral life.

On another note, in the same lane, government bureaucracies informed the marketing agencies trying to develop the next, great beer commercials that they could not depict the actors  actually drinking beer in their commercials, the adjustments those teams made revolutionized marketing. It may not have been the first time a marketing team sold a lifestyle over a product, but few commercials beat you over the head with this concept as often as beer commercials. The “As Seen on TV” infomercials followed suit by selling the glorious lifestyle their product could offer by resetting the base of the traditional, laborious task of mopping to gross.

Those of us who regularly worked with traditional mops, never found them gross or that laborious, but we fell for their punctuation-free pitches that only paused for applause, and after we purchased their “As Seen on TV” mops, we found that they were not that much better. They were just different, but how do you sell ‘just different’? You can’t, so you don’t, so the only tool at your disposal is to exaggerate the differences to gross to get a reaction. The marketeers decided to go so far over-the-top that it bordered on hilarious, but somewhere deep inside your psyche, you repeated their “it doesn’t have to be this way” mantra the next time you worked with a traditional mop. You pictured yourself in black and white, and no one wants to be depicted in black and white, so you dialed that 1-800 number, because you didn’t want to be gross in the manner your black and white mothers and grandmothers were. It was such a gross exaggeration of something that was ‘just different’ that we bought it, and we’ve tried to sell ever since. We might be giving these companies too much credit for influencing the culture, or too much blame, but if there were hundreds of seeds that affected this change, this was probably one that hit fertile soil and blossomed into everything else becoming so gross. 

The origin of gross began a rather solitary existence as a term we used to describe size. A friend of mine informed me that he just purchased “a gross” of our favorite fireworks. I could tell that Mark had no idea what gross meant in this context. There was just something about the way he said it that made it sound exciting and new. It was as if he couldn’t wait to start using this word in this manner, going forward.

I laughed, but my laughter was born of confusion. He saw my confusion and clarified that gross was a term used to describe big. “There’s big, big and fat, and then there’s a gross!” he explained. I didn’t know, and neither did he, that retail fireworks shops sold their products by the gross, meaning a dozen of a dozen, or 144 items.

Gross then made its way into accounting, and if an accountant called some level of our finances gross, they were talking about our take home pay before anything else was taken out. Our gross paycheck, for example, is what our employer paid us before the government reached in and took a huge chunk of it out, so they could spend our hard-earned money on what they wanted. Net, by contrast, is what we take home after taxes and various deductions.

At another point in its evolution, gross was a superlative to describe something greater than great, but not tremendous. That’s right, according to a version of the Oxford English Dictionary, gross used to be something short of a tremendous compliment. The progression of the compliment went from good >>>to great >>> to gross >>> to tremendous. So, if someone said, “You’re just gross!” at this point in its evolution, it was almost a tremendous compliment. So, how did we take this French word to describe big, large, and fat, or the Latin word grossus, which means thick, evolve to describe something that is just short of disgusting and grotesque? Based on this context, we can only guess that when someone saw someone else who was large and fat, and they called him gross, a third party probably misinterpreted that to mean he was messy, disgusting, and all the things that are now gross.

The exact timeline on the various evolutions, or devolutions, of a word like gross are almost impossible to define, as most deviations occur in casual conversations, but we can always count on hipsters to redefine a word, such as bad being good, as in “He’s a bad man!” but who did this to gross and why? If you do any research on it, you’ll find some blame directed at everyone from Shakespeare to the movie Valley Girls. Whatever the case, we all gathered together and decided to mangle, wrangle, and tangle gross to describe everything from big, and big and fat, to crude and unsavory behavior >>> to poorly cooked food >>> to what the cat leaves in the litter box >>> to the utterly unsavory man who doesn’t use a hand towel to open a bathroom door.

“He’s just gross!” 

“Oh, I know it, and he doesn’t even seem to care.”

We all use the subtle art of manipulation, or if manipulation is too harsh a term, how about coercion to influence our peers. We know certain words elicit better reactions than others. We see this most often in the teenage world. Everything is a superlative to them. Everything has at least two audio exclamation points behind it!! We know this, because we knew it in our teens. When we hit that vulnerable valley between youth and adulthood, we do everything we can to impress our peers with our opinion. We didn’t have a firm grasp on language at the point to form quality expressions, so we substitute words to colorize our attempt to master the art of persuasion. Most of us get better at that with age, and this ardent need to impress might subside, but it never dies.

The need to get reactions and impress in the teen world can overhaul everything we’ve learned about the psychology of language, or psycholinguistics. We speak, almost exclusively, in superlatives in our teens. Everything is classic, sick, lit, and the best thing to happen to humanity and the worst. These words get reactions, and we rarely turn away from them, no matter how old we are. Even though the average adult learns 40,000 words by age 24, we cling to the teen words awesome, sucks and gross for most of our lives, because they are time-tested and peer-reviewed.   

Something awful happened to gross, on its path to overuse and abuse, but at its worst, it never made it to disgusting. As we see in the progression from yesterday, bad >>>to worse >>> to awful >>> to gross >>> to disgusting, we once had a scale by which we could rein gross in, but some of us decided to render all other adjectives obsolete. Listening to this abuse, the listener might think the founders of our language didn’t provide us with any other adjectives to describe something beyond bad, or if they did, they didn’t do a very good job to it. 

If someone says, “You know what, I think my lima beans are slightly undercooked.” Our reaction would be, “Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that?” and everyone goes back to their meal. I mean, what’s the difference between a slightly undercooked lima bean and a fully cooked one? If she says that her lima beans are gross, however, what do we do? We don’t require further description, and we don’t need to interrogate the witness. We crinkle the nose. 

The crinkled nose now plays a prominent role in the conditional social compacts we share with one another, as the purveyor of gross might deem the conspicuous absence of a crinkled nose a personal insult. When someone says their lima beans are gross, we are to offer sincere, sympathetic, or empathetic, apologies followed by a crinkled nose to punctuate that apology. We offer them this to validate their complaint and offer real, material substance to their exaggeration of a slightly undercooked lima bean. Then, if she offers further description, and it can be anything, we know this requires us to go beyond the crinkled nose to some derivative of the empathetic, “Ewww!” 

We all know the laws and bylaws of our unspoken compacts that are expected of us on a certain level, but we may not ever see them for what they are, until we experience an exaggeration. 

***

“Best onion rings in the Southwest!” a restaurant submitted in their ad. In her attempts to convince us that we should go to this restaurant, Laura told us about that ad. She knew the price of onion rings, and she knew these were overpriced, but if they were the best onion rings in the Southwest, Laura was willing to pay that price for them. 

I only knew Laura on a superficial level, but dined with her often enough to know that there was no way that those onion rings would achieve the “Best onion rings in the Southwest!” in Laura’s after-bite report. The moment she ordered those onion rings, I could feel the barometric pressure in the restaurant drop, as the complaint cloud loomed over us. I correctly predicted the precipitation cycle from Laura’s first bite to the server coming over to check on us after we received our orders. I’m not a meteorologist, but I didn’t have to be to know what happens when dark, foreboding clouds begin to form. 

As if on cue, the complaints rained down on the server after Laura took her first bite. There’s nothing wrong with a complaint of course, but Laura could’ve limited her complaint to, “I paid for the best onion rings in the Southwest, and these are not that.” She could’ve sent them back and received another plate, or another item as a substitute, but Laura opted to display her standards of excellence by putting on a show. 

In her report to the server, Laura could’ve described her plate of onion rings as room temperature, but that term has no attention-grabbing exclamation points, so what did she say? She said, “These onion rings are ice cold!” to superlative her way to the crinkled nose. The onion rings were not ice cold. We could see no ice crystals hanging off them, and there was no dry ice-like smoke wafting off them. Yet, when she finished displaying her mastery of provocative adjectives, we feared touching her onion rings the way we do dry ice, because we all know the physics behind something being so cold that it could burn. 

To further bolster her characterization, and the resultant sympathy that naturally, and contractually, follows, she added that her slightly above room temperature onion rings were, “Gross!” Was it a gross exaggeration to call them gross? Yes, yes it was, but that didn’t stop her from saying it. It doesn’t stop any of us, because we want/need those reactions. No, when Laura declared her onion rings gross, we crinkled our noses and sympathetically “Ewww’ed!” her, because we wanted to form some level of solidarity with Laura and her complaints, so she would continue to be our friend. No one would dare challenge her gross assessment, because how do you challenge another person’s subjective opinion, and why would you want to interrupt a perfectly enjoyable meal with friends by saying, “They’re not gross, Laura, they’re just a little undercooked. Send them back to the line, have the chef cook them a little longer, or get some new ones, and shut your trap!” 

Another thing we know without knowing is that gross assessments carry an unspoken quid pro quo. If we offer Laura’s gross exaggerations visual and audible support, we expect her to offer her support of our complaints if they should ever come about. Most complainers, in Laura’s league, don’t. They refuse to abide by the unspoken tenets of our social compact, or our quid pro quo, because they don’t view our complaints as significant, as germane, or as informed as theirs. We all know someone like this. They say everything from an undercooked lima bean to finding a stray French fry in their pasta is gross, or absolutely gross, and we support her to fulfill our obligations in our shared compact. When we complain about something that we might later admit is relatively inconsequential, such as, let’s say, slightly undercooked red meat. They dismiss our complaint. 

“It happens when you order red meat,” a Laura-type might say. “When you’re ordering food, particularly red meat at a restaurant, you’re allowing someone else to cook it for you, and chances are,” the Lauras of the world say, emphasizing those two words sardonically, “chances are, they’re not going to cook it to your satisfaction. Just eat it, or send it back and have them cook it more and shut your trap.” The crinkled nose we give that is not a gross one, but one of insult and confusion. 

“She doesn’t see it,” we whisper to ourselves in wonderment. “She doesn’t know that she’s one of the biggest complainers in the Southwest.” Is it that, or is her dismissal fueled by the fact that if she allows us to complain and call everything gross, unimpeded, that might somehow diminish her assessments?

If you’ve ever gone this deep into the social compact we have with others, an exaggeration like this makes it apparent to us. Yet, when we recognize it, most of us sit in silent stupor and comment on it later to those close to us. Few of us would be so bold as to say, “Hey, I crinkled my nose for you when you complained about your onion rings, and I even said “Eww!” when you wouldn’t shut up about it. I think I’ve at least earned a crinkled nose from you woman.” Not only does their very public dismissal of our complaint violate our social compact and the quid pro quo we thought we had with them, but they’re totally oblivious to all of their complaining over the years. If we wonder how oblivious some of them can be, they’ll add an “I’m sorry, I just hate complainers” atop the pie, and if that don’t crack your dam, then you have far more control of your facilities than I do. 

After hearing Laura-types use and abuse the word gross for years, I briefly considered it my prime directive in life to mount a personal campaign against the power the word wields over our public discourse. I started small and polite, but at some point, I started trying everything I could think up to limit the use of the word in my social circles, for the purpose of giving it some of its power back. My modus operandi was that if we could all get together and limit the supply, it might have a corresponding effect on its demand. I didn’t do it for self-serving reasons. I did it for the word. Even though I knew that was a self-serving lie, I made some strides in my battle against the ‘ly words, literally and actually, in my social circles, and I thought my experience in this arena might translate to some success on the battlefield against the word gross. I lost. I lost so badly that … Have you ever heard of the infamous Battle of Little BigHorn? Yeah, like Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, I severely underestimated my opponents. I was bull rushed at times, and outflanked by others. It was a bloodbath. As with Custer, my troops abandoned me, all my Captains and Majors, retreated when they saw out how outnumbered we were in our initial skirmishes, and my fight proved pointless and pitiful, even among my closest friends and family.

The word is gone, I say to you now in my after-action report (AAR). I didn’t think anyone still used the musket, and when I saw that they did, I grew over-confident, but when so many use it, it leads even the best of leaders to acknowledge that some of the times even the best laid plans should, for the sanity and happiness of everyone involved, end in retreat.