Says the abstract of “The Role of Medical Language in Changing Public Perceptions of Illness”:

This study demonstrates that the use of medical language in communication can induce bias in perception; a simple switch in terminology results in a disease being perceived as more serious, more likely to be a disease, and more likely to be a rare condition. These findings regarding the conceptualization of disease have implications for many areas, including medical communication with the public, advertising, and public policy.

Among the technical/lay pairs studied:

• hypertension/high blood pressure
• erectile dysfunction disorder/impotence
• seborrheic dermatitis/dandruff
• myocardial infarction/heart attack
• hypertrichosis/excessive hair growth
• pharyngitis/sore throat
• myalgic encepalomyelitisencephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
• psoriasis/the heartbreak of (just kidding)

One technical phrase used in the study seems to operate in the opposite direction: “cerebrovascular accident.” On the surface, that doesn’t sound all that bad. It was an accident. Stubbed my cerebellum. Give me a Band-Aid. Just a little boo-boo. The phrase seems to inappropriately disguise the severity of the event: a stroke.

But a figurative cerebrovascular accident is just what you might experience if your doctor were to announce that you have been diagnosed with androgenic alopecia. Don’t panic. Just throw away the comb. It’s male pattern baldness. Don’t allow the doctor to infect you with verbomedicyclical terrhor—the fear of big medical words.

It’s a pretty lackluster word of the year, this bailout. And even the American Dialect Society recognizes it. When announcing the results of ADS voting, Grant Barrett, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and co-host of public radio’s A Way with Words, said: “You’d think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals could come up with something more exciting.”

Though it’s not a glitzy word, it was indeed important in its use, and in the frequency of its use, in 2008. And bailout beat out a number of interesting nominees (phrases are considered, as well). Some that particularly caught my eye (and the definition listed in the recent ADS WOTY press release):

• recombobulation area: An area at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee in which passengers that have just passed through security screening can get their clothes and belongings back in order.
• long photo: A video of 90 seconds or less. Used by the photo-sharing web site Flickr.
• thought showers: Coined by a British city council because the synonym “brainstorming” was said to be offensive to epileptics.

Just who thought-showered that latter gem?

Recombobulation area took first place in the ADS “Most Creative” category. Other category winners (again, with notes from the ADS release, and snarks in parentheses from yours truly):

• Most Useful Barack Obama: Both names as combining forms. (Barack Obama has found that phrase useful for many years now.)
• Most Unnecessary: moofing: From “mobile out of office,” meaning working on the go with a laptop and cell phone. Created by a PR firm. (In fact, most such acronums are proving themselves increasingly unnecessary and unused, waning from the heyday of yuppie and nimby. More on that tomorrow.)
• Most Outrageous: terrorist fist jab: A knuckle-to-knuckle fist bump, or “dap,” traditionally performed between two black people as a sign of friendship, celebration or agreement. It was called the “terrorist fist jab” by the newscaster E. D. Hill, formerly of Fox News.
• Most Euphemistic: scooping technician: A person whose job it is to pick up dog poop. (Seems a pretty lame selection after we’ve endured sanitation engineer for garbageman lo these many decades.)
• Most Likely to Succeed: shovel-ready: Used to describe infrastructure projects that can be started quickly when funds become available. (I disagree. You won’t hear it used more than three times in 2010, if that. Speaking of shovels, the phrase will be grave-ready once projects are underway.)
• Least Likely to Succeed: PUMA: An acronym for Party Unity My Ass, used by Democrats who were disaffected after Hillary Clinton failed to secure a sufficient number of delegates. It was later said to stand for Party Unity Means Action. (And soon to stand for Pretty Ugly Manipulative Acronym.)
• New Category: Election-related Words: maverick: A person who is beholden to no one. Widely used by the Republican Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Also in the adjectival form mavericky, used by Tina Fey portraying Palin on Saturday Night Live. (I put it in a different “new category”: Most Abused Word, and select it as the winner.)

Overall, I stick with my previous choice for 2008 word of the year: susurration, because nobody used it this year past year, and they should have. It’s a beautiful word, one to be spoken quietly in the middle of thought showers.

Or maybe crash.

For a crash-course in weasel wordery, I encourage you to visit JohnnyB’s Late for the Sky entry on a particularly topical euphemism. I shall say no more than that, so as not to telegraph any punch lines. Not that you can truly telegraph JohnnyB’s witty, insightful (and inciteful), creative perspective.

Long aside alert: JohnnyB and I were fellow writers for the recently retired Gary Burbank radio comedy show, broadcast out of Cincinnati and for a time syndicated nationally. The show was very successful, I might add, winning national awards and lasting more than two decades in Cincinnati and for years in other markets before that. JohnnyB and I were ourselves along for the ride for most of those two-plus decades. John started not long before I did, and when the show ended with Burbank’s voluntary retirement, the final comedy bit aired was, of course, John’s. So, I offer high praise for my submitted final comedy bit for the show, which was rejected even though it was much funnier than his, and curse the jackass for topping me once again. Hummph! End long aside alert.

Now, such catastrophic results could be could be good, and they could be bad, in that catastrophe began as a neutral word and now has negative meanings. This is quite the opposite of the words surveyed in Unfortunate English; those words were once pretty disgusting, but have risen to positive or neutral use. For instance, drat! sounds like such a soft interjection, until you discover that it is a contraction of “God rot you!”

A catastrophe in Greek theatre was the event that led to the conclusion. A loose theatrical/literary synonym for that usage is denouement. Now, much of Greek theatre isn’t exactly happy-go-lucky. Oedipus Rex, for example, is not a rollicking slapstick, and it has led to fewer Broadway musical comedies than, say, even the tale of Sweeney Todd. So you see how catastrophes got a bad name (“Daddy’s dead? And that’s Mommy naked under my sheets?! Where’s Sondheim when you need him?”).

The point is that my posting this blog entry was a catastrophe in that completion was the event that led to the result: the words now appearing on your screen and hopefully not straining your eyes too much. Now, if you’re reading this and agreeing with the modern sense of catastrophe, I thank you for your kind attention and note that the back button is likely on your upper left. If, however, I have convinced you of the innocence of catastrophe and the guilt of drat, maybe you’ll allow me to subject you to additional catastrophes another day.

And if you don’t return—well, then, Drat!

I had the honor of meeting Carlin in 1975, as part of a small group of student journalists interviewing him after a show in Madison, Wisconsin—physical miles and philosophical eons away from Milwaukee, where he was arrested after a 1972 show. The charge: disturbing the peace, because he had uttered the seven words you can’t say on television.

In that ‘75 group interview, Carlin was relaxed and reflective, talking the craft of comedy . . . and the craft of words. He said something in that interview that I’ve quoted dozens of times in the near dozens of years since that interview: “The funniest number of all is 105.” Then he repeated it, stretching it: “A hundred and faahve.” He paused. Perfect timing. “It takes a long time to go through all the others to prove it to you.”

I wrote up that quote as a humorous brief that I submitted as part of my 1976 job interview with Writer’s Digest magazine. I didn’t get that specific job, but I did well enough to be recommended for another spot at the company, and years later became the editor of the Digest. I like to believe that my love of words was instrumental in landing that position; I suspect that relying on Carlin’s wit and perspective communicated that love better than I did myself. Thanks for speaking so well, George.

I find it sadly ironic that the web page displaying the story that told me of his death had two “Related Video” links. One was headlined in words Carlin would have cheered: “Comedian George Carlin dead at age 71.” Right below it, a second link labeled “Comedian George Carlin Passes Away at 71.” Carlin railed against such empty, soft language as “passes away,” and the headline writer has insulted Carlin’s work by using not only the sort of dodge words but also specific dodge words Carlin attacked. Enjoy one of his tart diatribes against euphemisms—including, yes, “pass away”—at YouTube.

I doubt that I’ll be the only person to say this, or even the first. But when I heard this morning that Carlin had died, I uttered a couple of those words you can’t say on television.