Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Journalists’ strange obsession with salmon
One stray clip from the Schiavo case ... We journalists are often criticized for our lazy, formulaic word use. But who else but a journalist would be creative enough to mix a metaphor this way? Does any other group of writers make such prodigious use of the hyphenated participle? (From CNN’s obit)
Her relatives and friends never reached a consensus on whether the Florida resident would have wanted to linger for so long in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state. However, all who knew her agree the once-bashful woman would have shunned the litigation-spawned spotlight.
First, can a spotlight be spawned? Second, is litigation literally seminal? (It’s best not to think about it.) Here’s M-W:
spawn: Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French espaundre, from Old French espandre to spread out, expand, from Latin expandere
intransitive senses
1 : to deposit spawn
2 : to produce young especially in large numbers
transitive senses
1 a : to produce or deposit (eggs)—used of an aquatic animal b : to induce (fish) to spawn c : to plant with mushroom spawn
2 : BRING FORTH, GENERATE
- spawn·er noun