Month: May 2009

“a quality-built Ford”

Adjectives

I heard this on TV the other day.

Problem:
The modifier “quality-built” is truly meaningless.

Explanation:
I heard “a quality-built Ford” spoken by a narrator during a television commercial run by Ford the other day.

When I blogged two months ago about “a quality product”, I pointed out that the word “quality” was meaningless in that phrase.

Ford was trying to say that it makes high-quality vehicles.

But “high-quality-built” is awkward.

The solution comes from appreciating that high-quality vehicles are vehicles that are built well.

Solution:
“a well-built Ford”

“If worst comes to shove, …”

General

I heard about this expression last Saturday at a party.

Problem:
The second word is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friend Nickie F. sent me more information about this expression.

She said that a co-worker was discussing possible scenarios to resolve an ongoing HR issue when the co-worker said, “If worst comes to shove, then that is what we’ll have to do.”

The second word, as many readers will recognize, should be “push” instead.

The expression “If push comes to shove”, according to Answers.com, “comes from rugby, where, after an infraction of rules, forwards from each team face off and push against one another until one player can kick the ball to a teammate and resume the game.”

And its figurative use — that is, its use outside of rugby — dates back to the 1950s.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “If push comes to shove” — 155,000 matches
  • “If worst comes to shove” — 344 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct expression versus the incorrect expression by a ratio of 451-to-1, which is excellent.

Solution:
“If push comes to shove, …”

“Residual Value”

Devolution toward Simpler, Euphemisms

I saw this phrase in a Range Rover advertisement on television this morning.

The adjective “residual” seems to have been adopted by Land Rover as a euphemism for the adjective “resale”.

The adjective “resale” could have sounded too cheap to the advertising decision-makers at Land Rover.

Or Land Rover’s advertising team might have decided that the adjective “resale” reminds new-car buyers that one day they will be selling those cars.

And reminding a new-car buyer that one day he or she will sell that car probably is not something that a car manufacturer wants at the top of a buyer’s mind.

Contrary to my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis, it seems that Land Rover preferred a four-syllable, eight-character word over a two-syllable, six-letter word that says the same thing.

But that is a frequent characteristic of euphemisms: People go out of their way to avoid what they believe will be perceived negatively.

If you find yourself saying or writing a longer word when you know that a shorter word will express the same thing, notice whether you are trying to hide a negative perception behind that longer word.