Wander about but don't be copious

expatiate / ik-spey-shee-eyt / verb

1. to enlarge in discourse or writing; be copious in description or discussion: to expatiate upon a theme.
2. Archaic. to move or wander about intellectually, imaginatively, etc., without restraint.

History: 1530–40; < L expatiātus ptp. of ex(s)patiārī to wander, digress, equiv. to ex-  + spatiārī to walk about, deriv. of spatium

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) expands on the meaning:

(n.)
The act of increasing in size or bulk, real or apparent; the state of being increased; augmentation; further extension; expansion.
  
(n.)
Expansion or extension, as of the powers of the mind; ennoblement, as of the feelings and character; as, an enlargement of views, of knowledge, of affection.
  
(n.)
Diffusiveness of speech or writing; expatiation; a wide range of discourse or argument.
  
(n.)
A setting at large, or being set at large; release from confinement, servitude, or distress; liberty.

A good writer will endeavor to not "increase in size or bulk" but will seek "an enlargement of views, of knowledge, of affection." And endeavor to "release onself from confinement" of thinking.

Top phrases of the decade

I wrote recently of the "top words" of the decade, based on calculations of The Global Language Monitor, which uses a math formula to track the frequency of words and phrases in print and electronic media.

Here are the top phrases of the decade.

1. Climate Change (2000) Green words in every form   dominant the decade
2. Financial Tsunami (2008) One quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight
3. Ground Zero (2001) Site of 9/11terrorist attack in New York City
4. War on Terror (2001)  Bush administration’s response to 9/11
5. Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003)  Bush’s WMDs never found in Iraq or the Syrian desert
6. Swine Flu (2008) H1N1, please, so as not to offend the pork industry or religious sensitivities!
7. “Let’s Roll!” (2001)  Todd Beamer’s last words before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside
8. Red State/Blue State (2004) Republican or Democratic control of states
9. Carbon footprint (2007) How much CO² does an activity produce?
10. Shock-and-awe (2003) Initial strategy of Iraq War
11. Ponzi Scheme (2009) Madoff’s strategy reaped billions & heartache
12. Category Four (2005) Force of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans’ seawalls and levies
13. King of Pop (2000)  Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)
14. “Stay the Course” (2004) Dubya’s off-stated guidance for Iraq War
15. “Yes, we can!” (2008)   Obama’s winning campaign slogan
16. “Jai Ho!” (2008)  Shout of joy from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
17. “Out of the Mainstream” (2003) Complaint about any opposition’s political platform
18. Cloud computing (2007)  Using the Internet as a large computational device
19. Threat Fatigue (2004)   One too many terrorist threat alerts
20. Same-sex marriage (2003) Marriage of gay couple

Try not to be prolix

prolix / pro-liks / adjecive

1. Extremely wordy or verbose, long-winded, bombastic (in speaking).
2. Lengthy, too long, overly protracted (archaic).

From Dr. Goodword: Prolix is one of the oddest words in English: an adjective that doesn't look or sound like an English adjective, native or borrowed. Adjectives just do not end on [x] in English but this one does. This fact makes the adverb, prolixly, sound even odder, though the noun, prolixity, has a nice lilt to it, probably because the accent moves: [prê-lik-sê-ti].

Prolix is rarely used today in the simple sense of "too long". It is most often applied to wordy writing by harried English teachers: "This paper is so prolix, I often thought myself reading a novel with no plot." However, prolixity also finds its way into speech: "Merewether's speech was so prolix that he actually choked on a couple of sentences."

History: English took prolix, like so many others, from Old French, this time prolixe. French inherited it naturally from Latin prolixus "poured forth, extended", an adjective based on pro "great" + lixus "flowed", the past participle of liquere "to flow, run". The same root, liquere, underlies liquor "fluidity", which English captured for a different use.

In writing it's a gift to be simple

"Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all." -- Winston Churchill


"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein

"Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit." -- Samuel Johnson


"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." -- C.S. Lewis

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -- Leonardo da Vinci

The top words of the decade

The Global Language Monitor, which uses a math formula to track the frequency of words and phrases in print and electronic media, has announced the top Words of the decade, as part of its annual global survey of the English language.

The top words were ‘global warming’, 9/11, and Obama, followed by bailout, evacuee, and derivative; Google, surge, chinglish, and tsunami followed. “Climate change” was the top phrase, while “Heroes” was the top name; bin-Laden was No. 2.

The words are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.58 billion speakers.

 

“Looking at the first decade of the 21st century in words is a sober, even somber, event.” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor. “For a decade that began with such joy and hope, the words chosen depict a far more complicated and in many ways, tragic time. Nevertheless, signs of hope and renewal can be found in the overall lists.”

Look before you leap

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word 

is really a large matter — it's the difference 

between a lightning bug and the lightning." -- Mark Twain

A few days ago President Obama opined: " ... it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for generations, a achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American."

His use of the word precipice has been much noted, and the point most often made is that it is a particularly poor choice of words when referring to the health care bill, given that precipice carries the suggestion of danger, and for many people national health care would be dangerous.

From dictionary.com we get these definitions:

1. a cliff with a vertical, nearly vertical, or overhanging face.
2. a situation of great peril: on the precipice of war.

The word's history only makes it worse: 1598, "fall to great depth," from Fr. précipice, from L. præcipitium "a steep place," lit. "a fall or leap," from præceps (gen. præcipitis) "steep, headlong, headfirst," from præ- "forth" + caput "head".

Look before you leap, and think before you speak.

For your information

Trying to get heard above the din?

Americans consumed approximately 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2000. One zettabyte is 1,000,000,000 trillion bytes, and total bytes consumed last year were the equivalent of the information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska.

I've never heard the term zetabyte before. So there's another first.

We learn all this from the “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” by the University of California, San Diego.

Here are some details:

• The average American on an average day consumes 34 gigabytes and 100,000 words of information. 34 gigabytes a day is the equivalent of about one fifth of a notebook computer’s hard drive

• The new report estimates that between 1980 and 2008 bytes consumed increased 350 percent, for an average annual growth rate of 5.4 percent

• On average 41 percent of information time is watching TV (including DVDs, recorded TV and real-time watching)

• American consumers watched 36 million hours of television on mobile devices each month
  

• Based on bytes alone, however, computer games are the biggest information source totaling 18.5 gigabytes per day for the average American consumer, or about 67 percent of all bytes consumed

• Americans spent 16 percent of their information hours using the Internet (second only to TV’s 41 percent). With the proliferation of email, instant messaging and social networking, the Internet today dominates two-way communications, with more than 79 percent of those bytes every day

 Byte me.