Word: jargonizing
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...Your Essay on jargon points up one of the most basic problems in human understanding and communication: our misunderstandings with others often arise not out of what we say but out of what others infer from what they think we've said...
...well, even Churchill could never learn the proper use of jargon. When he took over in 1940, he had every opportunity to tell the British people that "dispatches from the zone of hostilities indicate that the military situation on the Continent has deteriorated to an alarming extent." He muffed it, of course, with "The news from France is very...
Both the Put-On and the Gross-Out are part of the Now Generation's "language bag"-a constantly changing lingo brewed from psychological jargon, show-biz slang and post-Chatterley obscenity. What the 1920s admiringly called a "good-time Charlie" is today Freudianized as a "womb baby," one who cannot kick the infantile desire for instant gratification. Anyone who substitutes perspiration for inspiration is a "wonk"-derived from the British "wonky," meaning out of kilter. The quality an earlier generation labeled cool is "tough," "kicky," "bitchin'," or "groovy." But the most meaningful facet of In-Talk...
STUDENT (writing furiously): Are you sure Jargon really works? In religion, I mean...
BEAZLE: It was nothing, really. We medical men have been confounding patients for years. As far back as 1699, the physician and poet Samuel Garth wrote: "The patient's ears remorseless he assails/Murders with jargon where his medicine fails." Still, physical medicine is nothing compared with psychiatry. There's where we Jargonists truly have our day. Suppose a man loses his wife and is unable to love anyone because he is sad. What do I tell...