Opinion: Rheta Johnson - 'language has become as dull as dishwater'

Fishtrap Hallow, MS

One of my best friends in the world is going “under the knife” today, which is what my mother would have said if someone she knew was about to have an operation. I never once heard her say “procedure,” which sounds more like a tax audit or a recipe for making cheese.

I think we’ve lost the more colorful, descriptive and, yes, precise way of talking that our elders had. I used to laugh at Mother’s old-fashioned way of talking, but now I miss it.

People not only went “under the knife,” they went “overseas,” not “abroad.” Think about it. Going over seas is exactly what you do when you venture to Europe – either by airplane or ship.

Farmers worked from “can to can’t,” but now we stay busy, or say we do, “24-7.” Mostly we’re online searching out one another’s criminal histories or ordering sneakers. What happened to “sneakers” anyhow? Nobody calls them that anymore, but I guess it’s too humble a word for sports shoes that cost hundreds of dollars.

Things used to get tighter than “Dick’s hatband.” But that saying is dated, since the only men wearing headgear seem to be youths with their baseball caps on backward.

I used to wonder as a child who Dick was and why he wore a hat too small. Now I wonder why anyone would wear a baseball cap backward. I hope it’s to look stupid, since that’s what happens.

Used to, people said you “couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a lawyer/pothole/fill-in-the-blank.” I swung a cat in a book I wrote, and readers reacted with claws bared. Sigh.

I love the old expression about chances, “slim to none,” which Dan Rather once used to great effect in his election-night coverage. “Candidate so-and-so’s chances,” he said – and I’m paraphrasing by using another antiquated expression, so-and-so – “are slim to none, and Slim just left town.”

We just don’t have good descriptive language anymore. People go around using “issue” when they mean “problem”

– I have a “problem,” not an “issue” with “issue” – and spouting off the never-ending list of “v” words that never are worth their salt. If I could I’d strike these words from the language: viable, vis-a-vis, virtual, viral, very.

Radio used to go out “over the waves,” but computers are personal and percolate on an individual desk, providing a virtual society and ending the need to leave the house, much less “paint the town.”

Back when there was a middle class, we talked about our somewhat richer neighbors in a descriptive way. Every town had its “Silk Stocking Row,” a street on which Miss Gotrocks lived. That meant she was “well-heeled.”

Today that expression “well-heeled” makes little sense, since everyone, poor included, is “well-heeled.” See “sneakers.”

Hank Williams used to end his radio show by saying he’d be back soon “the Good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise.” Nobody says that anymore.

I guess now he’d have to say something like “if the Higher Power’s willing and the software works,” he will give you a Tweet.

Maybe it’s just me, but language has become as dull as dishwater.

RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon ... And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.