Linguistic Larceny

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It was time for our semi-annual HVAC inspection.  The technician showed up with his impressive tool belt, and a small satchel leaking wires, gauges, and other gizmos and gadgets necessary to his trade. I do not know what your experience is in these instances, but mine inclines me to hide the checkbook and credit cards. It seems that no matter how well the system seems to be operating major - and expensive - adjustments are necessary. And, if one is to believe these modern day snake oil sales reps, the company requires them to advise you just what all needs to be done.

Anticipating a sales pitch for a small nuclear power plant for the attic or a backyard wind turbine, either of which would allow us to sell power back to the grid once the reasonable installation costs of 8 to 12 thousand dollars had been defrayed in just 15 years, I tried to cut him off at the pass: “I’m moving into phased-retirement, so we are really in a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mode.’”

To my astonishment his reply was a wry chuckle and, “I hear you friend, believe me, I hear you.” And he went off about his business. A couple of hours later he came back into the house for me to sign off on his inspection forms. One page included several hundred dollars of suggested “upgrades.” “You don’t really don’t need any of this stuff, but they expect me push it,” he allowed. 

He did want to talk about some of the art in the house and we spent a pleasant half hour or so talking about Venetian masks and Christine’s fondness for Renaissance religious icons. However, upon leaving he said, “Oh, the pollen is about to get bad. You might want to replace your furnace filters. Lowe’s has pretty good prices.”  I thanked him and hustled off to the computer to visit the company website to give him a glowing review.

The next day I gathered up the old furnace filters and took myself off to Lowe’s to purchase replacements. I found the right aisle, made sure I was in the section for the brand of ultra-hypo-allergenic-catch-everything filters we use and started to put one in my cart when the price tag smacked me upside the head: $60.00!  Now don’t get me wrong, I was expecting 25 or 30 dollars, but 60 just seemed off the chart.

I inspected the filter more carefully.  I discovered that there was a mustard colored disk nestled in the middle of the filter with instructions written below. Seems I was about to purchase a “Smart Filter” which, once I had downloaded the app and paired it with my phone would use a proprietary algorithm to detect optimal airflow, report on local atmospheric conditions, and, oh - let me know when it needed to be changed, for another 60 bucks!  My inner-Luddite rose up in indignation.

Maybe the damn thing works. Who knows. That is not the issue. The issue is that the marketers have stolen another word - “smart.”  We see it everywhere. Our telephones are “smart” phones, our televisions have become “smart” TVs - both themselves linguistic remnants of a previous era when “tele” was all the rage.  Look in the beverage section of any drug store or convenience store and you will see Smart Water on display, seriously. A closer inspection of the label might well reveal that the Smart Water is also “gluten-free.” I don’t know. I am afraid to look.  

But I digress. Let us return to the issue at hand. These filters are not “smart.” They are anything but. Let us seek some clarity in the dictionary. Dictionary.com - which compiles from some more recognizable sources gives us this:

Smart (1- 6) deal with pain, as in “that smarts”, an opportunity for cheap shots that I pass up only reluctantly.

—adjective, smart·er, smart·est.
7: quick or prompt in actions, as persons
8: having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability: a smart student
9: shrewd or sharp, as a person in dealing with others or as in business: a smart business person
10: clever, witty, or readily effective, as a speaker, speech, rejoinder, etc. 

My furnace filters - actually their furnace filters, I bought the ones with similar filtration that did not “pair” to an app on my “smart” phone - are not, by any stretch of these definitions “smart.”  Yes, it can “say” “I am dirty - change me.” But it cannot say “I am dirty. Change me. And by the way, the house is on fire.” You need a different app for that.

There is, perhaps, a better descriptor for these filters. I suggest “savant”. Back to the dictionary: 

Savant -

1: a person of learning; especially : one with detailed knowledge in some specialized field (as of science or literature)

2: a person affected with a developmental disorder (such as autism or mental retardation) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music); especially : autistic savant.

These filters are “autistic savants,” in less PC days also known as “idiot savants.” Brilliant in one tightly focused area, but complete idiots in the rest of the world. Think Rain Man but without Dustin Hoffman’s tug at the heart strings.  The reinvention of “smart” is the salesforce’s foot in the door, which by design or not, pries open the way for the “Internet of Things” We are encouraged to see the Internet of Things as this helpful safety net of “smart” products moving in graceful accord to cocoon us safe from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” An equally, if not more, plausible interpretation is that the Internet of Things will be an unruly conglomeration of idiot savants who don’t know that the house is on fire.

But, I keep forgetting that this is a post about linguistic larceny. “They” have stolen “smart.”  Mind you I do not believe, as apparently the French still do, that language is a static beast, doomed to be forever constrained by the standards of the breed.  Not at all. I believe the chief glory of the English language lies in its complexity and flexibility. After all, Shakespeare invented words. By various counts some 1,700 English words first saw the light of their literary day in his plays and poems. 

But Shakespeare didn’t just toss in words “willy-nilly” or “dilly-dilly” for that matter. Rather he did so when the language as it stood failed him; when the emotion or meaning of the moment stretched the fabric of the language to the shredding point. Then a new word, a better word, a more precise articulation became necessary, and he supplied it. The current pilfering of “smart” is no such moment.  It is rather the opposite of such a moment,  it is a cheapening of the language that smears nuance or clarity to confusion - a child’s finger painting with streaks of red, green and yellow still visible around the edges, but which on closer examination fades in its center to grit and mud.

In truth, I am more disappointed than offended.  One clings to the hope that humanity remains on an ascending path. That we become, with each succeeding generation, something better, more refined, more perceptive, more capable of expressing beauty and harmony than we were before. Yet when our language which, with our visual depictions, enables the expressions of our most ascendant selves becomes instead increasingly brutish and simplistic, the opposite conclusion presents itself: we are, in this aspect at least, devolving. 

It may well be, to complete my earlier uncited cribbing from the Bard, a time to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

Hamlet, Act III, scene 1.

By which I mean one should seek to apply the second tenet of Distilled Harmony, Enable Beauty, to your language. Written, spoken, dreamed, imagined. Who knows, well-crafted language might eventually morph into a meme.

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And for those of you who might be curious, some etymology on “dilly dilly” - a phrase so completely stolen by Budweiser that hollering it at the 2018 Master’s Golf Tournament will get you ejected. Right, the Augusta National Golf Club, while creaking its way to admitting women and people of color still prohibits any commercial “messages” on the club grounds. Obviously the apparel and the equipment of the golfers is excepted.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the 1700s a “dilly” was a cart used in agricultural and industrial work. As in “Get your dilly over here.” However, in that era it was also used as an adjective meaning foolish or mad. That might lead to “Are ye dilly? Get yon dilly over here!” It was not until the early 1900s that it acquired the Budweiser stolen meaning of “delightful” or “delicious.” Yet, Wikipedia traces the phrase/lyric “Lavender blue dilly-dilly, lavender green” to English nursery rhymes as early as the late 1600s. Which could, in theory, allow for “That lavender blue dilly dilly seems a dilly color for yon dilly.”

No more dilly-dallying around .  .  .  .   

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