|  |  |
 |  | |
| ||
| |||||||
| |||||||
|
| ||||||
| |||||||
| |||||||
 Recent commentary from National Journal: Legal Affairs: Ted Kennedy's Excellent Idea: Disclosing Admissions Preferences (February 4, 2004) Ted Kennedy has the right idea in wanting universities to disclose information on alumni relatives that they admit. But why stop there? By Stuart Taylor Jr. Wealth of Nations: How Tony Blair Survived His Scariest Week (February 4, 2004) Tony Blair has just endured the scariest few days of his political life. One of his problems also plagues George Bush: Iraq's missing WMD. By Clive Crook. Political Pulse: Desperate to Win (February 4, 2004) The man who had the most influence in New Hampshire wasn't on the ballot. His name is George W. Bush. By William Schneider. Social Studies: Do These Deficits Look Familiar? Meet Richard Milhous Bush (January 28, 2004) From a fiscal point of view, George W. Bush's presidency is starting to look a lot like Richard Nixon's—and that's not very reassuring. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Ashcroft and Congress Are Pandering to Punitive Instincts (January 28, 2004) Depriving judges, and even prosecutors, of all discretion to fit the punishment to the crime is not only mindless but also hypocritical. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: Saddam Tripped Up Dean (January 28, 2004) Iowa Democrats did not participate in the caucuses to make a statement. They participated to pick a winner. By William Schneider. Media: Our Mutual Trend (January 28, 2004) Trendspotting has always been a core media skill, but in recent decades it's been trending upward. By William Powers. More from National Journal. |
Media 
It's Raining Words
Sometimes phrases just catch on. Consider "wintry mix," an inexact phrase used to describe inexact weather. by William Powers ..... I realize the culture's supposed to be disintegrating, and we're all slouching toward some nightmarishly tawdry, Ryan-and-Trista kind of future. The best lack all conviction, and the worst eat worms on TV for big prizes. I know this, and yet I can tune in to the media at almost any hour these days and hear two words that restore hope. It's just a small thing, one of those voguish phrases the media pick up on and spray everywhere, like linguistic Cheez Whiz. Last summer, it was "metrosexual." Now, thanks to the recent weather in the Midwest and East, the obscure phrase that's taken on a life of its own and gone broad is "wintry mix." "It's a real wintry mix across the nation's middle, from St. Louis to the Carolinas," weatherman Ira Joe Fisher announced on The Early Show on CBS one morning this week. And he was not alone. The phrase is in full breakout mode all over television and radio, and it's also taken off in the print media. Google it, and you'll see what I mean. Suddenly, every city and town that has winter seems to have a newspaper in the wintry-mix club. The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.; The Herald of Rock Hill, S.C.; and The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk were all members in recent days, while the Associated Press found wintry mixes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., and Topeka, Kan. But the most dazzling specimen of all was in Asheboro, N.C., where at one point this week the Web site of the Courier-Tribune was offering the headline, "Wintry Mix Weaves Hazardous Blanket." And under that blanket, surely two or three more metaphors lay sleeping. As I tried to picture all this, I realized that though I have heard and read "wintry mix" dozens of times in the last year, I don't really know what it means. So I called the Weather Channel, where wintry mixes are detected all the time. Meteorologist Paul Kocin, the channel's winter-weather expert, told me a wintry mix is any combination of the following kinds of precipitation: rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow. That may sound simple, but as Kocin points out, the phrase is silent as to which combination is operative at any moment. In other words, it's not a model of precision. "I actually don't use it that much," he said, though many in his profession do. "To me it sounds kind of strange.... It doesn't really explain anything." Why would such an inexact phrase become so popular? Because the weather itself has been confusingly inexact, according to Paul McFedries, who runs a Web site called The Word Spy (www.wordspy.com) that tracks recent additions to the English language. The last few winters in North America have been full of wild weather, McFedries notes, recalling the "crazy ice pellets and ridiculous winds" in his own home city of Toronto. There was no popular word to describe such conditions, and "wintry mix" fit the bill. "Somebody says 'wintry mix,' and it tells you what's going on," he says. "It's a good phrase, in that it's short and it's to the point." "Wintry mix" isn't featured on The Word Spy because, unlike "metrosexual," "flash mob," and "bluejacking," it's actually been around for a couple of decades, albeit in a low-profile way. The earliest use McFedries could find, based on a Nexis database search, was a 1985 wire story from United Press International out of New England. "The storm brought a wintry mix of snow, sleet and rain to the Northeast today," wrote UPI's Jim Fisher. In the next eight years, the phrase appeared sporadically, though never more than five times in a single year. Then in 1994, the number of hits jumps to 19. The next year, it's 26. "By '99, you're over a hundred," says McFedries. Last year, the figure was 254, and this year, it's already on track to surpass that. (Bear in mind, these figures account for only a fraction of the phrase's actual appearances, since much of what is said on radio and TV and written on the Internet doesn't show up on Nexis.) The words have a whimsical Anglo-quaint quality, as if they were describing something that happens outside cozy thatched-roof cottages. But that's getting lost over time, as the phrase is increasingly associated with unpleasant and dangerous conditions. "Wintry Mix Leads to Accident; 5 Killed," said a headline last month in The Philadelphia Inquirer. McFedries, whose book, Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture, comes out next month, says this is normal. As new phrases pass into general usage, their meanings can change. The process begins when a phrase is created somewhere in the culture, often by some subgroup of people with common interests. It used to be that these neologisms typically remained inside the subgroup, but thanks to the Internet, it's relatively easy for a new phrase to go global—and quickly. "Flash mob," for instance, was coined in June 2003 to describe a certain kind of consciousness-raising event where a large group of people agree over the Internet to gather in a public place, perform some absurd action together—quack like a duck, for example—and quickly disperse. By September, the phrase had become so popular, McFedries says, many felt it had run its course. A Google search this week on "flash mob" returned more than 98,000 hits. "Wintry mix" yielded only around 16,000. But is it on its way to over-exposure? Perhaps—so while it feels fresh and popular, let's enjoy it. Even in an allegedly decadent, dumbed-down time, in the middle of winter, this crazy language is sending out new sprouts.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. |
| ||
|
Home |
Current Issue |
Back Issues |
Forum |
Site Guide |
Feedback |
Subscribe |
Search
| ||||
