{"id":531,"date":"2002-09-12T16:19:15","date_gmt":"2002-09-13T00:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=531"},"modified":"2008-06-07T01:28:41","modified_gmt":"2008-06-07T09:28:41","slug":"the-tragedy-of-sloppy-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=531","title":{"rendered":"the tragedy of sloppy language"},"content":{"rendered":"

miller@i330.org<\/a> quotes Charles<\/a> Krauthammer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Whenever I hear Sept. 11 referred to as just a tragedy, I wince. The San Francisco earthquake was a tragedy. The Johnstown flood was a tragedy. Hurricane Andrew was a tragedy. A tragedy is an act of God. Sept. 11 was no act of God. It was an act of man. An act of war. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

miller adds:<\/p>\n

Yes, in common parlance, the word “tragedy” has come to mean “a really bad thing.” For speechwriters, reporters and the man on the street, it is simply a shorthand way of describing the more properly phrased, “terrorist attacks,” “terrorist act of mass murder,” “terrorist conspiracy that took the lives of our fellow citizens.” But it’s a sloppy shorthand that prevents more disciplined thinking – as represented by Krauthamer’s clear-headed column. It just gets my goat. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Classically, a tragedy is a kind of drama, in which a hero is brought down by his own character flaw (such as pride or jealousy). I don’t insist that the word be reserved for events that fit the Greek dramatic form, but a tragedy ought to be a story<\/b> that contains a moral lesson<\/b>. An act of god is not tragedy; nor is a common murder.<\/p>\n

A few months ago<\/a>, on seeing the newspaper headline Search ends in tragedy<\/i>, my first thought was: did the search itself cause someone’s death? No, it’s merely that the missing child was found dead. A more accurate (and shorter) headline would be Search ends in sorrow.<\/i><\/p>\n

The deaths at Jonestown resulted from the followers’ abdication of personal sovereignty; that’s tragic. The sinking of the Titanic<\/i>, being an act of god, was not itself tragic; but most of the deaths were preventable, and therefore tragic.<\/p>\n

Subsidizing autocratic states, and driving their opposition into radical Islam, was a tragic blunder.<\/p>\n

(Ultimately, I’m told, tragedy<\/i> (trag-oidia) is Greek for ‘goat song’; I bring that up only to ask whether Miller had that obscure pun in mind.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

miller@i330.org quotes Charles Krauthammer: Whenever I hear Sept. 11 referred to as just a tragedy, I wince. The San Francisco earthquake was a tragedy. The Johnstown flood was a tragedy. Hurricane Andrew was a tragedy. A tragedy is an act … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}