Free

I've been "away" for a month, developing a new book: Engineering Your Life. The premise is that the same engineering processes that created wonders such as the Hoover Dam and the Apollo Space Mission can be used to solve everyday problems, and also to enhance creativity. I invite you to visit www.engineeringyourlife.com and click Forum. If you enjoy what you read, you can participate in the making of the book.

While working on the new book--with my coauthor Jonathan Caws-Elwitt--I've continued to job down words that interest me.

Today, if it's OK with you, I'm going to depart from this blog's routine of examining doublets--word pairs that may seem unrelated yet are connect etymologically, for example, cosmos & cosmetics, and rectitude & rectum. I want to focus on a single word: free. There are many uses for the word, but I'm thinking about it in the context of something given to someone without payment. When I was growing, marketers talked about "free samples," which allowed a potential customer to try a product without paying for it. On buses, information was dispensed from a container labeled "Free, take one."

These days, many companies have hijacked the word "free." For example, a certain credit-reporting company uses "free" in its title. The implication is that you can get your credit report free by going to a website. But you only get the "free" report if you purchase the service. You might think: "Well, sure, no one gives anything away without strings attached." Maybe now, but in the old days, they did. Why? Because the company believed that the person using the free sample would become a paying customer.

There are companies that now advertise they will give you a free supply of their product if you only will pay the shipping cost. To pay the cost, you need to sign up for the product and provide your credit card to pay the postage. But some of these companies then bill the person for the next supply even if the person who ordered the "free" sample doesn't want it.

Here's some free advice: When someone makes you a free offer, your first move should be to protect my wallet. Caveat emptor? Sure. But still I'm angry about the debasement of a perfectly good word.

Euphemism, Flatulence, and Style

According to the New World Dictionary, "euphemism"--from the Greek elments eu, "good" + pheme, "voice-- is "the use of a word or phrase that is less expressive or direct but considered less distateful, less offensive, etc. than another.

To my way of thinking, deliberately choosing language that is "less expressive or direct" is far more offensive than any word could be. Euphemism smacks of obfuscation, cowardice, and--in the extreme--just plain lying. So, for example, we have a "Department of Defense" instead of a "War Department." We speak of "collateral damage" instead of "innocent victims."

Which brings us to "flatulence," a word that we can say on the radio--no problem--but we can't say "fart" without getting into big trouble. Weird because "fart" refers to the exact same noisy phenomenon as flatulence.

Why can't we say "fart" or "shit" or "fuck" on the radio? Do those words actually offend anyone more than "flatulence," "excrement," or "intercourse"? If you want to talk about offense, let's start with the pricks (:penises" if you prefer) who devise tax schemes that soak the poor to benefit the rich.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against "flatulence," per se. I'm glad it's in our language. I happily included it in "Words of a Feather, where I showed the close relationship between "flatulence" and "inflation"--both words deriving from the Latin word "flare" meaning "to blow."

If I were writing a poem about farts and needed a three-syllable synonym for the sake of the rhythm, I'd jump up and down in thankfulness for "flatulence." But I'm against employing that word simply to separate me--via indirection--from reality.

In case you don't find the above argument persuasive, let me bring in the big gun Mark Twain, who worked at a time when popular writers were often paid by the word. Rather than talk about the power of clear, concise, direct writing--a la Strunk and White--Twain playfully explained: "I never write "metropolis" for seven cents because I can get the same price for "city." I never write "policeman" because I can get the same money for "cop."