"Let's Kick This Around"

In America, the Jesuit weekly, the Rev. Thurston N. Davis, S.J., last week wrote some testy words about the state of the American language. Father Davis was especially upset over linguistic corruption by advertising agencies:

"Here are a few samples of the verbal bacilli we take into our bloodstreams every day with the morning paper. A blimpwich is a monster Dagwood. Traxcavators are for the farm, exercycles for the form. Mistle toes are slippers. Ranchjamas and perma-sized skijamas are what you wear to bed. You also wear antsy pants . . ."

Celaperm Dangerating. "Planning to give people presents? Why not a phono-rama for the family, a cholly boss for the kids . . .? Wear-with-all lipstick makes a cheap gift for the wife. Why not write her a check for the handsome celaperm acetate taffeta shower curtain with the elegant lurex stripe . . .?

"Perhaps the language of Chaucer and Churchill is better for now including k-veniences, which are hangers, coinveniences, which hold money for parking meters, kon-veen-yunt tire chains, foodtainers and keytainers, roylies, which are doilies, plast-t-cap thumbtacks, tasteas, teariffic teabags, kar-pokits, diced cream, expaditers (pads of paper), slipper-grippers, chap sticks, paper mates, superfection strawberries, dangeratings, schweppervescence . . . Ladies can do lots in culottes, and summarize in summer dresses, size 16-40. After a long day in the office, their husbands come home and slip on their leisuals . . ."

Irium & Bullium. "Each of us has a bit of Walter Mitty in him. We like to feel cut in on the mysteries of nuclear physics and biochemistry. Few of us will ever find uranium in our vegetable gardens, but we can all have razor blades treated with duridium, shoe polish with lanolor, warfarin for killing rodents, irium in our toothpaste. We can even make topsoil in the backyard with fluffium. As a wag put it not long ago, all we need now is bullium . . .

"This meretricious use of sounds and syllables to titillate a jaded public has no limit. The result is a slow corruption of language. Words are meant to have meaning. They are conventional symbols for the spiritual realities we call ideas. Until the recent past, a kind of abiding respect for language kept us from permitting its disintegration through arbitrary combination of its mangled elements. When new words came to life, their birth was superintended by jealous academies of lexicographical midwives . . . Now anything goes . . .

"Perhaps this is too solemn an analysis of Madison Avenue," concludes Father Davis. "After all, a fellow has to make a living. But as they say down there when a big problem comes up late Friday afternoon: 'Let's kick this around over the weekend, and Monday morning we'll get together and cross-pollinate.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.