words, words, words

An interesting observation about word definitions and their (mis)use...

Yesterday, I ran my first Articulate Seminar. It was tremendous fun and I found that talking about writing with people from different industries illuminated old problems in new ways for me. Andrew Yeomans came along from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and afterwards he sent me his delightful deconstruction of press release hype:

“This amazing, prestigious and sophisticated product is a quantum leap forward and performance is a greater order of magnitude, and will decimate the competition. The enormity of this tremendous advance indicates our commitment to servicing our customers in a forensically sound manner.”

Various dictionaries give:

• amazing 1. Causing distraction, consternation, confusion, dismay; stupefying, terrifying, dreadful.
• prestigious 1. Practising juggling or legerdemain; of the nature of or characterized by juggling or magic; cheating, deluding, deceitful; deceptive, illusory.
• sophisticated 1. Mixed with some foreign substance; adulterated; not pure or genuine. 2. a. Altered from, deprived of, primitive simplicity or naturalness. Of a literary text: altered in the course of being copied or printed. 3. a. Falsified in a greater or less degree; not plain, honest, or straightforward.
• quantum 5. Physics. A minimum amount of a physical quantity which can exist and by multiples of which changes in the quantity occur.
• magnitude 3. A class in a system of classification determined by size. a. Each of the classes into which the fixed stars have been arranged according to their degree of brilliancy. Now regarded as a number on a continuous scale representing the negative logarithm of the brightness, such that a decrease of five magnitudes represents a hundred-fold increase in brightness and a decrease of one magnitude an increase of 2·512 times.
• decimate 4. transf. a. To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of.
• enormity (-nôrmt) n., pl. e·nor·mi·ties. 1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
• tremendous \Tre*men”dous\, a. [L. tremendus that is to be trembled at, fearful, fr. tremere to tremble.] Fitted to excite fear or terror; such as may astonish or terrify by its magnitude, force, or violence; terrible; dreadful; as, a tremendous wind; a tremendous shower; a tremendous shock or fall.
• advance \Ad*vance”\, v. t. 7. To furnish, as money or other value, before it becomes due, or in aid of an enterprise; to supply beforehand
• commitment \Com*mit”ment\, n. 4. A doing, or perpetration, in a bad sense, as of a crime or blunder; commission.
• service \Serv”ice\, n. 11. Copulation with a female; the act of mating by male animals
• forensic Relating to, used in, or appropriate for courts of law or for public discussion or argumentation.
• sound a. Meaningless noise. b. Thorough; complete: a sound flogging.

So the translation is:

“This confusing, dreadful, deceitful, illusory, adulterated, dishonest product is the smallest possible small step forward and provides less than half the performance, and will kill very few of our competitors. The monstrous evil of our releasing this dreadful product before it is ready demonstrates our crimes in screwing over our clients, see you in court where we will speak complete nonsense.”