Jargon

In the words of my youngest daughter, it was "ginormous" news when the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster announced this month they would add one of her favorite words to its collegiate dictionary. "Ginormous" combines gigantic and enormous, and it's tough to tell from my daughter's use of it exactly what qualifies. It can be applied to the stuffed animal grand prize in some contest booth at the county fair, or the bruise she got during a game she played last weekend, or to a just-bigger-than-normal piece of pie. But no matter how it's applied, it's clear that she and her friends certainly know what "ginormous" means.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: CANT The earliest sense of the protean word cant that the Oxford English Dictionary records is from the seventeenth century: "the whining speech of beggars. " But it was in the eighteenth century that the word dropped the training wheels and really got moving.

Atlanta -- Language update: It is no longer hip to refer to taxpayers as ''taxpayers.'' Now they're ''customers.'' Government provides its customers with ''services,'' and what it has lacked up to now is a system of ''quality management.''No one has as yet suggested that an IRS auditor be referred to as a customer service representative, but you get the drift.This new jargon was much in evidence last week when Vice President Al Gore met with a hundred or so Atlanta-based federal workers for a town-meeting-style session on government waste and inefficiency.

Had you been sitting near me at the paragraph factory yesterday evening, you might have noticed a clenching of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes, and a pursing of the lips as I came across the construction "7,000 youth. " A quick look this morning at the Corpus of Contemporary American English confirms my suspicion that I have identified another instance of bureaucratic language bleeding into general usage.* The CCAE shows multiple examples of youth in the sense of youths , individual young people, in professional medical and educational publications, fewer frequencies in general publications.

Are you confused when your broker says your stock is headed for "bagel land?" Not sure whether to worry that your bank loaded up on "CDOs-Squared?" Do you fall into a trance after reading the first paragraph of a mutual fund prospectus? It's not just you. The financial world is filled with jargon that even some financial professionals admit they don't always understand. Some sales people use complex terms as a way to impress customers. The consequences of this are serious. We carry more of the burden today of managing our own money so it lasts our lifetime, and jargon intimidates or keeps some of us from investing while causing others to jump into the wrong investments.

When Sandra Mitchel arrived at the Whole Life Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday, she made her way to the Vogel Photonic Triangulation Unit: a massage table surrounded by crystals and colored lights and connected to a tripod busy with wires and a green cube covered with knobs and meters.A graphic artist for the Navy, the Arlington, Va., resident took off her shoes, stretched out on her back, closed her eyes and turned up her palms.A sign read: "Quiet please. Sacred space."When the table was turned on, waves of energy passed from the cube to crystals connected to colored lights aimed at chakra points along Mitchel's body, according to body worker Kate Shawgo.

Too bad the great American poet Dr. Seuss didn't live to see the Big Bang of cyberspace, with the Internet going from geek retreat to nationwide playground in just a few years. The creator of the lorax, the sneedle and the wumpus would be at home with the gigabyte, Unix, Spam, RAM and ROM.The world of computers has long been full of elaborate and arcane jargon, seemingly designed to separate the newbie -- novice -- from the pro. But the soaring popularity of the Net has spread that jargon far and wide, and it seems like you can't open a package of gum without seeing something like http: //bubbles.

Like many fields, finance has its own language. Words and phrases become shorthand for complex concepts. New words are created each business cycle, while old jargon can take on new meanings. Terms can be as dry as, well, convertible subordinated debentures. Others are colorful, borrowing from literature and pop culture. A Wall Street broker recently e-mailed online financial dictionary Investopedia.com with a question: "What's a Bo Derek?" He wasn't referring to the actress who played Dudley Moore's vision of the ideal woman in the 1979 movie 10. He meant a Wall Street term for the perfect stock.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: CANT The earliest sense of the protean word cant that the Oxford English Dictionary records is from the seventeenth century: "the whining speech of beggars. " But it was in the eighteenth century that the word dropped the training wheels and really got moving.

Numbers-- Claims for unemployment benefits increased by 6,000 last week to 327,000, a figure seen as indicating a healthy labor market, the U.S. reported. TIP OF THE WEEK Writing is more than putting words on a page. It is using words that make sense (no jargon or pretentious prose), that express an idea in the clearest possible way (proper grammar, good sentence structure). Never forget your reader. Whether you are writing a letter, a proposal, a brief or an e-mail, you and your company will be judged by your writing.

Some of the grand jurors investigating allegations of misconduct by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon have grown tired of the probe and its near-daily media coverage, one grand juror told a Sun reporter last month. The exchange provoked a cringe: grand jurors - or any jurors - are not supposed to expose themselves to news accounts of the cases they are assigned. And it raises a question that goes to the heart of the integrity of the criminal justice system: are jurors routinely violating their oath not to research cases - at home on their computers, in the jury deliberation room on the iPhones, by glancing at news reports - on their own?

Are you confused when your broker says your stock is headed for "bagel land?" Not sure whether to worry that your bank loaded up on "CDOs-Squared?" Do you fall into a trance after reading the first paragraph of a mutual fund prospectus? It's not just you. The financial world is filled with jargon that even some financial professionals admit they don't always understand. Some sales people use complex terms as a way to impress customers. The consequences of this are serious. We carry more of the burden today of managing our own money so it lasts our lifetime, and jargon intimidates or keeps some of us from investing while causing others to jump into the wrong investments.

Brady Daniller can speed read -- or spread, as it is called in debate jargon -- with the best of them. The Wilde Lake High School sophomore said he capitalizes on his ability to talk fast to cram all of his ideas into six minutes of allotted speaking time. But one of the judges at Saturday's debate competition at Loyola Blakefield in Towson said there is often an accompanying strategy behind that technique. "Spreading allows you to run your arguments rapidly past your opponent, so he or she has a difficult time absorbing them all," said Teresa Needer, a math teacher at Towson High.

In the words of my youngest daughter, it was "ginormous" news when the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster announced this month they would add one of her favorite words to its collegiate dictionary. "Ginormous" combines gigantic and enormous, and it's tough to tell from my daughter's use of it exactly what qualifies. It can be applied to the stuffed animal grand prize in some contest booth at the county fair, or the bruise she got during a game she played last weekend, or to a just-bigger-than-normal piece of pie. But no matter how it's applied, it's clear that she and her friends certainly know what "ginormous" means.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA There's something about this place. Maybe it's the tango. Those of you who have witnessed the real thing know tango -- when done right -- is not a dance for sissies. It is aggressive, moody, seductive, sometimes beautiful and maybe a little dangerous. Like Buenos Aires. So ... is it a cliche to compare Buenos Aires to the tango? Maybe, but it was either that or Evita. Which brings me to the subject of steakhouses -- but first, the obligatory travel story transition paragraphs: Cool place to visit, Buenos Aires.

Chris Williams appreciates plush surroundings. In December, he and his wife, Alice, stayed in a $350-a-night Ritz-Carlton in Florida. "Marble everything," he said. But last month, the couple from Rome, Ga., decided on the Holiday Inn Express Hollywood, where room rates recently ran as little as $104 per night, for their five-day getaway to Los Angeles. "It's nice to live in luxury," said Williams, who supervises technicians at a cable TV company. "But it's not feasible." Millions of frugal travelers agree.

Ernest Smith's language of love comes with subtitles. He's written a sweet comic ode to the local tribal jargon called ''Hey Hon! How to Talk Like a Real Bawlamoron,'' an inspiration which came to him the day dem O's left Moryul Stadyum and a local teebee reporter asked a fan how she felt.''Oltnao hon, ah'b got mixed fillins, very mixed fillins,'' she replied.To the uninitiated, this translates as:''I don't know, hon, I've got mixed feelings, very mixed feelings.''Smith did his own simultaneous translation that day, having been versed from birth in the local syntactic idiosyncrasies.

Had you been sitting near me at the paragraph factory yesterday evening, you might have noticed a clenching of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes, and a pursing of the lips as I came across the construction "7,000 youth. " A quick look this morning at the Corpus of Contemporary American English confirms my suspicion that I have identified another instance of bureaucratic language bleeding into general usage.* The CCAE shows multiple examples of youth in the sense of youths , individual young people, in professional medical and educational publications, fewer frequencies in general publications.

Numbers-- Claims for unemployment benefits increased by 6,000 last week to 327,000, a figure seen as indicating a healthy labor market, the U.S. reported. TIP OF THE WEEK Writing is more than putting words on a page. It is using words that make sense (no jargon or pretentious prose), that express an idea in the clearest possible way (proper grammar, good sentence structure). Never forget your reader. Whether you are writing a letter, a proposal, a brief or an e-mail, you and your company will be judged by your writing.

The most famous lead in sportswriting is Grantland Rice's account of Notre Dame's football victory over Army in 1924: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. "In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden." What would he write today? "Cool as the other side of the pillow, Brady Quinn avoided a big USC rush to hit Jeff Samardzija on a deep pass as Notre Dame fans shouted, `He ... could ... go ... all ... the ... way.'" Or something like that.