Several times I’ve alluded to the phenomenon of meeting a word that suddenly everybody’s using. I then do research on the word or phrase and often discover that it’s been around since my seventh birthday, or the Punic Wars — which-ever came first.
A friend and former colleague, Jessie Farrington, mentioned the same thing a while back in regard to “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving. She asked, in an e-mail, “When did people start using this expression? Now, I’ve always known that for some people the day after Thanksgiving is a big Christmas shopping day. I think this was particularly the case when the Christmas shopping season, including Christmas decorations in the stores, didn’t start until after Thanksgiving. But, to call the Friday after Thanksgiving ‘Black Friday,’ when did it start?”
Let’s find out, but first, more observations on the word-has-always-existed phenomenon:
“Convoluted” is a popular term, particularly during political debates, as in “My opponent’s arguments are so convoluted that …” Perhaps, but many people use it simply to mean confusing, incomprehensible. My dictionary defines it more specifically, as in intricate, twisted and coiled, and therefore confusing.
If a speaker interrupts the presentation with a few too many digressions, convolution is likely to set in. Well, “convoluted” sounds much more exotic than “confusing,” a term used mainly by those who have “been da callidge.”
Watch for “convoluted” in the heat of this year’s elections, and remember, it means much more than “confusing.”
“Myriad” has become a favorite of journalists who want a synonym for “many.” My mommy taught me never to use myriad as a noun, as in “I have a myriad of debts.” “Myriad” ought best be reserved as an adjective, as in “I have myriad (many) debts.” So it’s settled: You can have myriad things, but you don’t have a myriad of anything.
But wait, there’s more. My Merriam-Webster dictionary, while agreeing with me, does so only to a point. It mentions myriad as both a noun and an adjective. And it cites recent criticism of its use as a noun. As an unrepentant language cop, I loathe reading constructions with “a myriad of,” but, regrettably, language changes.
And M-W says the noun form of myriad existed before the adjective came along. Myriad originally meant 10,000. Thus, our West Las Vegas school board recently put in motion a two-myriad raise to a top official, while teachers and the rank-and-file got 1/10,000th of a myriad, or a whole dollar.
Even writers like Milton and Thoreau once used “a myriad of.” My regret is in having to break the news to my sister Dorothy Maestas. She’s the one who alerted me to what we both thought was incorrect usage. She’s currently out of state; soon she’ll be out of sorts; I’ll be out of explanations, so quickly I need to find a myriad of ways to give her this news.
My first foray into the Google website to look up Black Friday took me directly to myriad advertising pitches. Are they still having a myriad of Black Friday sales? It’s reminiscent of a cartoon I once saw, in which the department store’s manager saw Santa Claus in the kiddies’ section and asked, “Are you still on the payroll?” That was in July.
There were literally 132 million sites for Black Friday, or about 13,200 myriads. I struggled getting past the many Black Friday ad pages, offering women’s and men’s shoes, digital cameras, laptop computers, handbags and totes, cologne, chaise lounges and serving carts.
Where was my 13-year-old grandson and namesake when I needed him to navigate these websites and point me to a definition, a reason, as to why it’s black?
Many sources cite wars, fires, disasters and financial scandals somehow related to Black Friday. One citation goes back to Sept 24, 1869, and describes a financial scandal that rocked the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. There was even a ‘40s science fiction movie starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, with that title.
One of the more plausible explanations comes from Wikipedia, an online dictionary that explains the term “may have originated in Philadelphia … to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.” But, predictably, the business world has pre-empted the term, given it a positive spin and now uses it to mean “being in the black,” turning a profit.
Many sites identify Black Friday, whose more current usage surfaced in 2000, as the official start of the Christmas season. But in the past decade, commerce has gone way beyond that and supported moves to start Yuletide as soon as the Halloween costumes go into storage.
As the season grows longer, watch for candy canes to start appearing around Labor Day. Maybe Santa’s remaining on the company payroll was a good idea after all.
See the word “decade” above? Everyone knows it means 10 years. “Deka,” from Greek and Latin, meaning “ten,” spawns the related word “decimate,” which many take to mean destroy utterly. Not quite. Originally it meant to kill one of every 10 soldiers, as a punishment for the entire group. Now, it refers not only to humans, but to crops, animals, even manuscripts.
And that meaning serves as a perfect excuse to end this column, whose word count is approaching one-tenth of a myriad.
Best to close now, lest sometime this decade the editor-boss decides to decimate a myriad of these convoluted words.