HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRIPE-VINE
Philip Cu Unjieng
Even before the pervasive influence of social media; momentous, historical occasions have always led to new words being coined, particular terms suddenly gaining popularity and entering the mainstream. And let’s face it, along with the good and helpful, there’s also been the banal and/or confusing. What do I mean? If I surveyed 20 educated people in the first week of February, 2020, how many would have been able to tell me what PPE’s are? It’s now become part of the nomenclature of our COVID-world; much like how we know the difference between PCR nasal swab testing and the rapid blood sample antibody-testing (but how many realize PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction?). So many of these corona-speak buzzwords and phrases have become part and parcel of our daily conversations and lives.
It’s like how we all can create a picture in our minds when I say scuba gear. But do you know the etymology behind “scuba” is Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus? It’s repeated usage and acceptance has turned the acronym into a commonly used word, and the origins get lost in history. Closer to home, if we reflect to before the 2019 local elections, and if Manila Mayor Isko Moreno had not won, would “Yorme” be as popular a term as it is now? Never mind that it’s in fact a very Old School inversion of syllables, but you can’t argue with how it’s entered our mainstream, everyday Filipino.
Lexicographers have a field day when these things happen, with dictionaries often playing catch up to what is going on in the real world. And I love it when wordsmiths “play” with the terms and jargon, creating puns that actually make more sense - like how the talk of “flatten the curve,” becomes the lockdown reality of “fatten my curves.” What is cautionary though; is how, as these buzzwords and phrases become popular, people tend to use them without any real clarity as to what they mean, or if they’re being used properly.
As our President offers himself to the Russian COVID vaccine that’s bypassed rigorous testing, be prepared to start hearing “herd immunity” bandied about. When enough people in a given population have been administered an effective vaccine, the community develops a herd immunity, where said people are protected from getting the illness even if some have not gotten the vaccine, because the vast majority is immune and incapable of spreading it. And be careful when using the terms Morbidity and Mortality. Morbidity is the measure of how many people have an illness relative to a population, while mortality refers to how many have died as a result of the illness. Don’t confuse one for the other.
When I mentioned “used properly,” I also meant pronunciation. This is a pet peeve of mine; as in this day and age, it’s so simple to check this on your smartphone. And yet, the ones who should know better are so damn lazy, and end up leading by mistake. My classic example, for years now, is “indigent” – as it’s so often used by government people. It’s not in-die-gent, with accent on the second syllable. The accent is on the first syllable, and the i in -di- is a short vowel i. Nowhere in the world is it pronounced the way I’ve heard so many do so here, perpetuating the mistake.
Once, at an event, there was this Self-Help motivational speaker and with half my attention elsewhere, I was drawn to listen to what she was saying as she kept referring to a Pla-Too. She was talking about Life’s up’s and down’s, but how we should also resist getting stuck on a Pla-Too. Glancing at her slides, I realized she was trying to say Plateau (pla-toe). Come on, that’s such an essential part of your spiel, and you couldn’t even check to ensure you pronounced it right? Whenever I come across a word I’m not sure about – definition or pronunciation – I always check, as that’s so much better than presuming I’m right, or staying ignorant.
The business world is no exception, Thank God it’s 2020, and I no longer have to attend meetings where we are asked to “think out of the box,” that we need a “paradigm shift,” or adopt “blue sky thinking.” Those buzz phrases have been relegated to the dust bin of business idioms. But unfortunately, this 2020 and the pandemic has seen the resurrection of a term that’s been around for more than a decade, but is suddenly the ‘It’ word of the season – pivot! In business parlance, it’s when a business or enterprise changes direction, when a fundamental change is effected in the business model to adapt to new circumstances. And while it’s obviously essential to the times, it’s been overused like a spent condom; brought in repeatedly just to make the person talking look like he or she knows what they’re talking about.
WFH has led to coined terms like Zoombombing – when an individual tries to take over and dominate a Zoom session, to Quaranteams – when you’re put together as a team and exclusively operate online, and Blursday – how the continued quarantine set-up has led to one day being just like the day before it, or the day after. They’re all fun, and indicative of the world creating jargon to share this COVID experience, and trying to make some sense of it all. I wonder though as to whether some of these terms will enter dictionaries, or still be part of people’s vocabulary a year from now.
And before I sign off, can I just mention that “bake” is a verb. While I know that expressions like clambake and bake-off exist, why have we allowed Sushi Bake to now exist? It’s Baked Sushi at the very least, or Sushi Casserole. Just saying.