For those who are curious about the history/derivation of such things, you might read Kathleen Miller’s wonderful article in the N. Y. Times Magazine’s On Language column today. While this column is the home of William Safire, ol’ Bill is on vacation, and guests write the column this month. Ms. Miller is the former editorial assistant to Mr. Safire. In other words, SHE did the heavy lifting.
Also, there are many threads on the SDMB about the origins of the phenomenon.
Think there’s any chance that Safire will finally give up his column? When he started he was a good balance to the insane prescriptionists that were running rampant with no understanding of English (John Simon; Edwin Newman). But his monomania on political slang and his always outdated take on every cultural trend are beyond tiresome. I’ve gotten to the point where the only thing I admire about him is that he prints all the letters in his books that show him to be wrong on every single supposed fact in every column. Not to mention that the books keep falling farther and farther behind, so that they refer to six-year-old “current events” when they’re published.
I should have added that Ms. Miller, when she was Safire’s assistant, monitored the American Dialect Society Mailing List, and posted questions to it for forthcoming articles that Safire was about to write for the NYTimes Magazine.
Those of us over at the list would provide her with earlier cites for words/phrases than could be found by looking at outdated sources such as the OED. That is, when she bothered to check things out with us.
But Safire would obviously run columns without telling her to check out things. So, when Saddam was captured in a “spider hole” Safire wrote a column which incorrectly cited the timeframe for the origin of the term. It took the mailing list about 15 minutes to find earlier cites.
My wife highlighted the part for me where Snoop Dizzle wanted us all to know that it’s over.
I’m a little sick of Safire too, for the reasons that Exapno cited. If it’s a “good word” I’ll read the article. Otherwise, onto The Ethicist – who, btw, didn’t rip into that last guy nearly enough yesterday.
