Returning to my new favorite linguistic crusade... this from Rotoworld today:
Quote:
General manager Jon Daniels said Tuesday that the Rangers have not discussed trading Mark Teixeira with any teams recently and have no plans to shop him.
"Do I expect to get some calls? Probably," Daniels said. "But I won't be making any. Mark is not one of our issues. He's been our most consistent player. He's a star in this league."
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Mark Teixeira, 2007:
April: .236/.346/.341
May: .349/.438/.661
First Half, 2006: .275/.353/.445
Second Half, 2006: .291/.394/.604
Wow. Talk about consistent...
Now, to be fair to Jon Daniels, I suppose he might have meant that Tex has been consistent on a yearly basis. But even if that's what he meant, it's still not a particularly meaningful statement; given that multiple years are required for this sort of judgment, Teixeira's only competition for "most consistent" would be Hank Blalock and Michael Young. Both of whom I suppose he beats consistency-wise... but who cares? Why not just say "Mark has been our best hitter over the past few years, and is in the prime of his career"?
My objection to all this isn't that the word
consistent is being "misused." I'm a linguist; I know better than to pretend that words have clearly defined "correct" and "incorrect" uses. My objection is that linguistic innovation typically serves a purpose (i.e. expressing new concepts, responding to new social conditions, expressing old concepts in a more relatable manner), and this does not. It's not like Daniels was walking on thin ice and needed to find a suitable banality to avoid offending anyone; praise of Teixeira is expected in that situation. He had nothing whatsoever to gain by sucking every possible ounce of meaning out of his response.
I understand why we have euphemisms for things in the sexual/scatological realm. But why on earth would anyone want a euphemism for a non-taboo concept (in this case, words like
good and
excellent)? And if we do in fact need one, couldn't we have picked a word that doesn't already have a clearly established meaning relating easily to baseball? I don't get it.