The stickler's dilemma

How much do we let a word's origins limit our usage of that word, and do we pretend we can't see down to the roots of a word?

A friend and I exchanged greetings the other day warmly, but with a standard formulation: "How are you?" and "Very well, thanks, yourself?"

Then he asked again, to get me to repeat my response. "Very well, thanks," I said.

His concern, he soon acknowledged, was whether I would just blurt out, when I was in a nonprofessional setting, "I'm good."

A while back I decried in this space the use of "I'm good" as a reply to "How are you?" And immediately I started to hear "I'm good" almost everywhere, including out of the mouths of many who are near and dear to me.

Ouch. If I had it to do over, I probably wouldn't have written that column.

This is the problem with getting known as a stickler. You have to be always "on." And you can't pretend you don't have views on, or in some cases actual knowledge of, the language issues at hand.

The upside of this, though, is interesting questions from friends. I had a quick ping a few days ago from someone at another publication asking whether dilemma was really the best word choice for the context of the passage she was working on.

She recalled that I had once counseled reserving dilemma for situations involving a choice between two options. But the passage at hand referred to a state of general perplexity, in which clear options hadn't yet presented themselves.

Dilemma comes from Greek through Latin, from "di," meaning "two," and "lemma," meaning "premise." Is it really being too much of a stickler to say, "Save it for instances where you have just two choices"?

The Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't think so: "It should be used only of situations where someone is forced to choose between two alternatives, both unfavorable to him."

The Usage Panel at the American Heritage Dictionary likewise comes down against using dilemma as a general synonym for "problem." However, 64 percent of the panel members agree that dilemma could be used for a situation presenting more than two clear options.

My friend and I decided that quandary was the word to use. Ironically, it was a safe choice because it seems no one knows its derivation – no etymological baggage here!

Think you're a film buff? Take our movie trivia quiz!

The "di" meaning "two" of dilemma may be plain as day to someone who knows just a little bit of Greek word roots. (It's the "di" of carbon dioxide, each molecule of which consists of a carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.) There is a point, though, when you have to say, look, we're speaking English, not Greek or Latin, and words change over the centuries.

And sticklers need to be sure of their facts. Some, for instance, hesitate to use dialogue for a three-way conversation. But the front end of that word isn't "di" meaning "two"; it's "dia," meaning "across." A dialogue is "words across," etymologically, just as the diameter of a circle is the "measure across" it.

A way out of the stickler's dilemma is to think about three levels of acceptability for words and usages: those you use in your own writing; those you let pass in the writing of others even though it's not how you would have written it yourself; and words and usages you need to correct in the work of others, if it's your professional task. And as to the "dilemma" dilemma, I'll stick with the kind that has just two horns.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to The stickler's dilemma
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Verbal-Energy/2012/0315/The-stickler-s-dilemma
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe