Media misuse of words

Ballistic.  Ballistics is the study of the inertial motion of objects under the influence of gravity, windage, momentum and so forth, with no midflight attempt to change speed or direction.  To "go ballistic" means to stop trying to control the vehicle, to let inertia do its work.  In the scene in the movie Top Gun where the pilots were talking about this, they meant they were going so fast they kept going for quite a while, despite throttling down.  Going really fast under high power and in control is NOT ballistic.  If an athlete or car loses control after going really fast and crashes through a barrier, that is ballistic.

Cache and cachet.  A cache (pronounced "cash") is a small store of something, stored away for later, or the act of storing something in such a place.  Cachet (pronounced "ca-shay") is the prestige or fashionableness of something.  A few days ago, a soldier was pointing to the pile of crates he and his men had dug up in Afghanistan, describing them as a "cachet" of weapons.

Could care less.  A lot of people say this when what they actually mean is "couldn't care less".  If you could care less, it's because there's still room for you to care less, that is to say, you do still care, at least a little bit.  If you couldn't care less, it's as if to say your care-meter on this subject has bottomed out.

Decimation -- people seem to think this is much worse than "Devastation" but not necessarily.  Decimation was a punishment the Romans meted out, most often to legions that had displayed cowardice in action.  They'd execute one in ten, chosen at random, to scare the others into acting better next time.  So if the bad thing completely destroyed about 10%, leaving the rest relatively untouched, that's decimation.  If the bad thing destroyed 50%, that's much worse than decimation.

Gridlock refers to a specific type of traffic jam, one which is the result of multiple backups in an urban grid intermeshing in such a way as to prevent any of them from moving.  The term is a merging of "Grid" and "Deadlock".  I often hear the giant traffic jam that occurs when the mountain pass is blocked, or a due to a blocking accident as gridlock.   There's no grid in the mountain pass.  Snowlock maybe. The grid, if there is one, is irrelevant to the blocked road.

A Hacker is a computer programmer who works quickly, often by modifying existing code (the etymology is from "Hack and Slash", and to those who do it, the simile is apt).  The implication is that this is also sloppily done, although a number of the very best are neat workers too.  The media has decided that people who break into and vandalize computers or steal data or software should be called hackers.  Some of them are hackers, but most are not and most hackers don't break into computers.  Many worms and viruses are probably written by hackers, but most hackers do not do these things.  A better term for those who break and enter computers is “computer cracker”—in the sense of “safe cracker”--or "vandal".

 

An Implosion is a specific type of kaboom.  A kaboom where the detritus goes outwards is an explosion.  A kaboom where the detritus goes inward is an implosion.  A recent trend in building demolition has been to use a large number of small explosive charges to simultaneously (or sometimes sequentially over a short period) undermine the structure of a building so as to make it collapse inwards on itself...an implosion.  The triggering charge for an atomic bomb is an implosion.  Once critical mass is achieved, the fissionable material of the bomb then undergoes an explosion.   Many in the media have taken to calling any kaboom an implosion, apparently because they think it sounds more cool.

Unthinkable means you literally couldn't think of it before it happened, either because nobody had the idea, (as in "previously unimagined".  Sept 11 may qualify for this) or because thinking about the topic causes the mind to rebel and you can't get your mind go there.  Disgusting and offensive as it is, child molestation is clearly not unthinkable, because lots of bad people have not only thought about it, but done it.  The second time some particular reporter says that a child molester has done the unthinkable, they're not telling you that the crime is unthinkable, but that the reporter can't think.  Personal favorite, from an actual reporter and former pro football player here in Seattle: "Once again, the unthinkable has occurred."

Words have meaning.

(Bertrand Russell tells a story where one of his house staff was accused of stealing something.  She defended herself by saying: "I ain't never stole nothing".  Russell, ever the logician, works through the logic of this statement, which literally translated,  means that there does not exist a time in all of history at which she has not stolen something.  or put more simply, she has *always* (including before she was born) been stealing something.)