This week’s post is for all the independent publishers and bloggers out there who don’t have an in-house grammarian to advise them, but would like some inspiration to think more carefully about the words they use in their posts.
So I’m kicking off this feature in honor of the character from William Goldman’s The Princess Bride who utters this famous line in the Rob Reiner film version:
For those of you not clicking the video link, here’s the quote: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Too often writers type superlatives without care for the subleties that the individual words they select offer. This week’s Inigo Montoya word of the week is “incredible.”
Folks typically use this adjective to suggest a positive quality, but it actually means “not credible,” that is, something not worthy of belief, confidence or trust. As a journalist, pretty much the last word you want someone to use in describing your work is “incredible.” :^)
And yet… here are a couple of examples from the past week’s news where someone missed the definition:
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Connected: The Incredible lives up to its name
“The Droid Incredible from htc and available on the Verizon Wireless network is an Android phone that generally fits its name. Over a few weeks of use, I have found it comfortable to carry, convenient to use and capable of my trust. That means it does what I expect when I expect it — something not all electronic devices live up to.”
What a lousy name for a cell phone. But the writer here never calls the manufacturer on that. Instead, he makes the same mistake, declaring that the device he deems “capable of my trust” “generally fits its name” that means… something incapable of trust.
From The Indian Express: Incredible India wins over athletes
“With the curtains about to fall on this edition of the Commonwealth Games, it is time for the athletes to savour their experiences of the city and the Games. With most of the events already over, there is a sudden spurt of athletes at popular Delhi landmarks like Dilli Haat, Janpath and Connaught Place. And contrary to all the apprehensions and negativity clouding the Games, most of the athletes have given the city a thumbs up.”
“Incredible” here is meant as a compliment, but unless the headline writer (“incredible” is not used within the article) meant to imply that Games athletes were expecting to live like the kids in “Slumdog Millionaire,” perhaps he or she should have passed on the alliteration.
So let’s give credit this week to the Chicago Tribune for Marathon not enough for incredible Benoit Samuelson
“What Joan Benoit Samuelson did in Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon was remarkable.
“Added to what she did Monday in Boston, she ought to be in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
“Benoit Samuelson not only raced again the day after fighting through a hot 26.2 miles in the fastest time ever by a woman 53 or older, 2 hours, 47 minutes, 50 seconds.
“She also finished 10th in the Masters (40 & over) Division of Monday’s Tufts Health Plan 10k (6.2 miles) for Women with a time of 40:29. That clocking was good enough for 60th place among the 6,699 women in the race.”
The Tribune’s use of “incredible” suggests something so outstanding as to defy belief, accurately evoking the full meaning of the word.
Effective use of adjectives should add spice to our language, giving readers the full flavor of the stories we bring to them. But those words must accurately reflect the story. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone to believe our work is, well, incredible.
About Robert Niles
It is incredible to me that you fail to understand the incredibly flexible nature of words. As demonstrated in the previous sentence, incredible means both unbelievable and fantastic. I know right, incredible!
Perhaps the Inigo Montoya word of the week should “grammarian”, as I believe you meant “Lexicographer”.
You know, this kind of pedantry is annoying enough when it’s the normal boring attack on colloquial use of language, but here, you’ve ignored a valid definition in order to make your ridiculous point! Incredible, with the meaning “extraordinary”, fits every one of the examples you pulled out.
The next time you feel like sneering at your lessers, try to remember that the dictionary has more than one definition.
Robert, the word “Incredible” is widely used to mean positive, probably in other parts of the world. I am from India and India ran / still running a worldwide, hugely popular campaign named “Incredible India”. The article you have referenced in the post is derived from the same. I am not sure if the word is used differently in US and UK systems.
If individual words are so flexible that they can change to mean anything, then what’s the point of thinking before writing? Why not just hook up a random generator to a dictionary database and let it do the writing for you? (Or give the assignment to an infinite number of monkeys?)
‘Incredible’ brings a flavor to the table that other superlatives lack. Why ignore that? Why lose that flavor through a generation of writers ignoring it? It’s not as if the English language is so lacking in superlatives that we need to hack this word into something else.
(And no matter what anyone else says, I will continue to believe that “Incredible” is a bad name for a cell phone.)
And to Paddu: Strong point, but I hope that my post might illustrate how that campaign might backfire among those folks in the rest of the English-speaking world who remember all the meanings of “incredible.”