90ways - Criticism

adv. See "Really."

Adverbs are the bastard outcasts of the diagrammed sentence. There are entire lectures in writing course dedicated to eradicating their use. Like cats in tall grass, editors stalk them for elimination.

And yet they live on and prosper and grow, although the growing part sometimes requires unorthodox measures. Nouns and verbs swell their ranks with the invention of things. [See Ms. Drimmer, below.] Adjectives spring up from slang like dandelions. Adverbs are forced to recruit their new members from the adjective camp. "C'mon! It's so easy. All you have to do is wear this 'ly' and you're totally in."

Recently, however, something strange has happened. Real has become an adverb. It did so in spite of Really already sporting an "ly" and holding down the adverb spot for many years. Undeterred, Real marched into adverb territory just as it was.

Really had become too earnest. Really was for little kids and others constantly confronted with skepticism. "Give me back that pog or I'll tell. I really, really mean it." Anyone using Really suddenly sounds as if they protest too much. Real, on the other hand, plays it cool. It's that rare monosyllabic adverb with nothing to prove. It's emphasis without the histrionics and pleading of Really. That "ly" was always sort of a lame give-away. Maybe more adjectives will follow Real's example and make the leap to adverbdom without tarting up first.

v. From the late English bad meaning bad and talk meaning talk.

Apparently defame, sully, tarnish and slander weren't enough, so the OED added a new verb, bad-talk, meaning to speak ill of someone. Ever since the tragic execution of Winston Smith, Big Brother has been racking his brains for improvements to Newspeak. How better to simplify the language than to make verbs out of nouns? How better to make nouns than to combine two words, so basic that any cab driver can understand them. Then, one can gradually apply the original principles of Newspeak.

Bad-talk won't be the end product, of course. In a few years, the OED will phase in ungood-talk, followed, in a few years, by double-plus-ungood-talk, as in, "I hear you've been double-plus-ungood-talking me to my friends; please stop or I will throw lye into your face."

n. From the phrase "a big man."

The online basketball community has a few favorite pastimes: speculating wildly about trades; feverishly debating things like All-Star and MVP selection months before there could be any way to make a judgment... or care; and turning adjectives into nouns. It saves keystrokes.

The flagship adjenoun to come of this practice is Big. Centers and power forwards, pituitary freaks who are considered under-sized at 6'8", have long been "big men." Now, to spare us all the agony of two syllables, they have become Bigs. Few words are more annoying than Big the noun.

The unsettling thing about adjectives becoming nouns is the absolute way in which it reduces someone to one trait. Not that it's so very important to consider Shaquille O'Neal's acting talents when watching him on the basketball court but just because he's a big man doesn't mean he has to be a Big. Bigs is upsetting in the same way Blacks and Whites are upsetting, reductive words. Using one descriptor to name a person is as dehumanizing as it is lazy.

Imprecision in language is, at least, an equal opportunity. Referring to guards as Smalls is beocmign more common in the wake of Big's success.

I can't stop shilling for corporate America, and I swear all my clothing is logo-less. Yet I've developed a sort of branding tic that's endemic to American society and is possibly the greatest marketing ploy since subliminal advertising. It's not that I want to be a walking advertisement, but when my nose is running, the urgency of the moment demands that I ask for a Kleenex. And when the need arises to clean my ears, I go looking for Q-Tips. I can't simply photocopy anything, I've got to Xerox it, and wanting to write anything in permanent ink demands that I pick up a Sharpie. Of course, if I change my mind and make a vain effort at erasing my words, I'll reach for some Windex or just give up and cover it up with Wite-Out. It doesn't seem to matter that when I use these products they might not even be the brand to which I refer. Somehow, the brand itself has become the product, indicating what? That its makers have succeeded in the ultimate marketing game, manipulating the very vocabulary with which Americans speak? Or that they've defeated themselves with branding ubiquity, rendering us deaf to the call of the label? Truly, I don't know. I'm just thankful I've never Hoovered anything, what with its images of a crusty old cross-dresser.