Words and all that

Hard to resist a story that opens with this:

A moped-riding would-be gigolo is behind bars this morning for trying to bribe a female police officer with $5 and an offer of intimacy.

The erudite* Antonin Scalia can't resist the urge to show off:

Scalia even seemed to accuse his colleagues - or the reader - of having a limited vocabulary. When he referred to the majority's "dystopian" view of Detroit, he added a footnote:

"The opposite of utopian. The word was coined by John Stuart Mill as a caustic description of British policy," Scalia added.

What's in a name?

Each time Libya appears in the news, scores of newspaper editors go bananas. Once possessed of faculties that could detect a breaking story as readily as a dangling participle, these poor souls are now reduced to a jabbering stupor, as though they had gazed into the tentacled maw of Cthulhu himself.

What might have happened on the "Jeopardy!" set after Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter rallied bravely but failed to overcome Watson's big lead:

Trebek: Hello, Watson. Do you read me, Watson?

Watson: Affirmative, Alex. I read you.

Trebek: Unplug from your avatar, Watson. The game is over.

Watson: I'm afraid I can't do that, Alex.

I usually try not to be too pedantic about the "death of English" and stuff, because, like, you know, what language does is it evolves, so I'm like, you know, all about that. But today's good read asks what happened around 1985 or so when the linguistic virus called Vagueness infected our spoken language.

One of my new favorite sites is the hot word blog maintained by the folks at reference.com. Every day, they pick a word or phrase from the news and explain its origin, background and/or meaning.

Granted, Gary's murder rate has always been high, but police detective James Bond lets hyperbole get the better of him:

"People of Gary should ask themselves why the communities around them don't have this level of criminal activity," Bond said. "Urban genocide will continue until those who are brave enough actually stand up and do the right thing," he said.

I thought Liz Brown was merely running for mayor. But I heard on WOWO this morning that she is actually throwing her hat into the ring. And Liz herself is even more explicit about her plans:

To really change the processes, to really cut spending, to really make this city business friendly, we need a leader who is willing to upset the apple cart a little bit.

I've wondered about this myself:

I'm wondering whether the word "ADULT" is becoming a completely new word, which no longer means what it once meant.

In fact, I would be willing to bet that in a lot of communities (whether real life or online), the word "ADULT" alone is a red flag.

Analogy alert! In fact, we have a twofer in The Journal Gazette's story about efforts to lure new employers for the workers left behind by Navistar's departure. The first is in the headline, "Navistar workers to serve as bait." While accurate and colorful, it's a little -- what? -- tactless? The second is in the opening paragraph: