Word!

Words have always been important to me, ever since I had a high school English teacher who so loved talking about books that you could almost hear the capital B when he said it: Book. I don't mean to imply that it was a Mr. Chips environment; as things go, his class wasn't anything remarkable, but there was something about the way that he said that word, and something about the way that he revered the concept, that stuck with me ever since.

It bothers me sometimes to see words used badly. I admit, my definition of 'badly' would likely not make anyone else's list of Egregious Use of the Language. But there are some common uses of the language that make me cringe, just a bit. One of them is use of the word 'fight'.

We're fighting against cancer.

We're fighting for your rights.

We're fighting mad.

No, you're not. No, you're not. And no, you're probably not.

You're doing research to find the causes of cancer, so that you can develop treatments which are effective against cancer, and which may reduce or eliminate the instances of cancer.

You're instituting litigation to uphold or deny a specific political or legal position in order to forward or retard specific or generic political or legal actions which you feel strongly about, one way or the other.

You're unhappy, but you probably aren't about to break out into fisticuffs.

I got to thinking about this while reading an article on the Boing! Boing! blog regarding the Barenaked Ladies group, and specifically on how they're opposed to the Digital Rights Management legislation. The blog said that in addition to being an excellent group, BNL was 'fighting the bad guys'. See, I don't think they are. (I'll ignore 'the bad guys' part; there's something to be said for DRM, though not much, but even if there were nothing, 'the bad guys' is just a little too cutesy-poo for me.) They're opposed to it; they're taking actions to invalidate and eliminate it. But 'fighting it'? No, not really.

I know, I know. To most people, that is fighting. Just, not to me.

Now, about that word "disrespect". Guys? It's not a verb, okay?