And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that I have never made New Year’s Resolutions. Always figured I was having enough trouble keeping promises more or less forced upon me, like the 10 Commandments and a slew of legal “don’ts.”

This year, I am tempted to resolve to learn a new word whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Example: Due to things involved with the holidays, I neglected to order more books for winter reading. I am addicted to reading, and when I am finished with one book, like any addict, I am wondering where my next book will come from, as others worry about their next hit or drink.

So, I started reading some old issues of The Annals of Iowa, booklets published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Iowa. In one was the story of the Meskwaki Indians around Tama-Toledo, and their battle to have their own “nation,” their own government. At the same time, they claimed they had a right to annuities to be provided by the federal government, the government they did not recognize as having any say in their situation.

The author used the word “usufruct” to describe that. I looked the word up, and it means, simply, to claim a legal right to the profits of others.

Well, I thought, that sounds like a perfect word to describe the income redistribution favored by Socialists and liberal Democrats. Doesn’t anyone at The New York Times or the Associated Press know that word, I wondered?

Words have been my life, and I know lots of them, and what they mean. Not as many as the late William Buckley, though, one of my idols.

But sometimes words mean different things, and one that has bothered me is one so frequently used these days, sanctions. When I was in school at St. Pat’s and later at university, it was necessary that the school “sanction” whatever we did in the name of the school that was not routine. Sanction, used as a verb in that case, means with approval and consent.

But today’s use is as a noun, in which case it means a coercive measure to achieve a desired outcome.

I should give up on word usage. Just as I started this, a commercial with a spokesman for a money making firm announced that “China is making their move.” You idiot, I shouted to myself. China is a collective noun and so takes a singular verb ... China is making ITS move.

Ah, well. Meryl Streep has no idea what lifetime achievement means, and she makes millions for pretending, so I should bother?