Parrots Often Get It Wrong

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Sometimes, when people are more used to hearing a word than to reading it, they “parrot” the word without understanding either its derivation or the nuances of its meaning. The result is that they end up with a word that sounds something like what they think they want to express, but that actually means something entirely different.

Last week, the world lost a remarkable man. “We shall not see his like again” was a sentiment expressed in many of the testimonials and memorial pieces that appeared in the press, but one particular word—or one of its forms—was used repeatedly. 

The word was “icon,” and Steve Jobs was repeatedly described as “iconic”—except when he was described as “iconoclastic.” Jobs was, in fact, both, but last week it seemed that most people used the two words as if they thought they were interchangeable. They are not. 

Did the speakers intend to say that Jobs was both iconic AND  iconoclastic? Or were they just making a “parroted-word” mistake? Ms. Picky will let her readers work out this particular conundrum themselves, but, in the meantime, let’s take a look at these and a couple of other often-parroted words. . . .

Icon. “Icon” means image. An icon (or ikon), in the Russian, Greek, or Eastern Orthodox churches, is the image of a saint. An “icon” on a computer screen is a recognizable graphic symbol of a particular application. The word “icon” used for a person means that that person is a symbol of something, or is admired for a particular talent or accomplishment. Jobs was certainly an iconic figure and was admired for the way he untethered music, personal communication, and personal computing from the home or the office and put them into our hands. He became a global icon. 

Iconoclastic. “Iconoclastic,” in its religious sense, means a “heretic “or “destroyer of images.” In its secular sense, it means radical or revolutionary. 

Grand. “Grand” means imposing or magnificent. It is usually a positive word.

Grandiose. “Grandiose” means ostentatious or pretentious. It is not a complimentary word; it has only negative connotations, yet the word is frequently used, incorrectly, to mean grand or magnificent.

Simple. “Simple” means uncomplicated. It is usually used in a positive way.

Simplistic. “Simplistic” means naïve and unsophisticated—something that is actually complex, but that appears simple only to a simpleton. It is a negative word.

Before you take a word you don’t know intimately out in public, it makes sense to get acquainted with it. Look it up. It might not mean what you think it does. . . .

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Bulletin Board

To G.L.:

There is indeed much debate on the past tense of certain irregular verbs. The modern desire seems to be to make all irregular verbs regular. That might be easier, but it is not correct. 

You ask, in particular, about “wreaked” as the past tense of “wreak.”  Certain “grammarians” like to go back 600-800 years to support a position that wreaked is correct, while others insist that wreaked is a modern formation that has become “acceptable.” If some grammarians believith that they should be boundeth by an English-language usage of more than four hundred years ago, there are more than a few irregular verbs they will have to change. Nor should neologistic formations that popped up only in the last fifty years be considered correct. Ms. Picky is in the camp of Alexander Pope:

“Be not the first by whom the new is tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”

The principal parts, then, of wreak are: wreak, wrought, wrought.

The principal parts of hang are hang, hanged, hanged. (Pictures, of course, do get hung, but people get hanged.)

The principal parts of dive are: dive, dived, dived. What, then, is “dove,” you ask? A small, gray bird.

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