"What's the Word? Tell Me What's Happening"
by James M. Truxell
Every young child eventually discovers that the endless repetition of a word, even ones own name, wears out the word and renders it meaningless. Frighteningly, this is happening as our media attempts to describe the ridiculously dysfunctional state of American politics, especially on Capitol Hill. The abundant overuse of adjectives for describing this mess has worn them out and provoked a dangerous adjectival shortage.
This is a matter of critical importance for all of us, of course, for without adjectives we eventually become, well, speechless.
We are nearly there. According to officials at the Library of Congress, the nation will soon run out of lively adjectives to describe what is happening in Washington. The Library's National Adjective Countdown Clock shows that we will officially run out of still-functional adjectives sometime shortly before July 18, 2016.
On that date, the Republican National Convention will convene in Cleveland, Ohio. We will need plenty of robust adjectives to cover it. Meanwhile, ongoing coverage of the score of Republican candidates for President continues to deplete the illuminating power of many adjectives.
This profligate overuse of certain adjectives to describe our political "dysfunction" (itself one of the overused adjectives) has, following the provisions of The Adjectival Accountability Act of 2002 (A.A.A.), forced the Library to retire these adjectives for a period of not less than seven months.
During this time, their meanings will be rehabilitated and restored, principally through the enforcement of a complete ban on their daily use in all printed media. This ban will be phased-in, but will be totally in effect as of January 18, 2016, which is Thesaurus Day: a day devoted to celebrating the birthday of Peter Roget, born in 1779 and author of Roget's Thesaurus.
As an aid to newsrooms and bloggers who have been caught off guard by this action by the Library, the following is a partial listing of the newly banned adjectives, many of which are already near death.
They are: "dire, confusing, maddening, absurd, shocking, dispiriting, preposterous, unreasonable, foolish, desperate, critical, dysfunctional, climacteric, clamorous, imbecilic, puerile, doltish, stupefying, cynical, ludicrous, and simpleminded."
Empowered by provisions of the A.A.A., the Library of Congress has tapped into the National Strategic Adjective Reserve in search of replacement adjectives that may be used to facilitate editorial writing and blogging about the nation's on-going political mess.
On Thursday, the Library released a long-sequestered adjective as a replacement for all those soon to be in therapeutic quarantine. The adjective is: esquivalience.
The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition of 2005 says the origin of esquivalience is in the "late 19th century, perhaps from the French esquiver, meaning to 'dodge, slink away.'" (In truth, the word was created out of whole cloth by the editor of that edition and was placed in the dictionary to track others' attempts at plagiarism.)
The N.O.A.D. defines esquivalience as: "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities; the shirking of duties; an unwillingness to work, especially as part of a group effort."
As an aid to those charged with writing about the current status of proceedings of "the world's greatest deliberative body" and other political train-wrecks, we will use esquivalience in the following sentence as an example.
"The esquivalience demonstrated by the GOP in recent months . . . indeed since the inauguration of President Barack Obama . . . is the most xxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx in living memory." *
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* The bold Xs above represent what is, perhaps, the first instance of the Library's enforcement of the ban on over-used adjectives. Presumably they have had the assistance of the National Security Agency in this enforcement effort.
