Entries associated with the tag "kerfuffle":

"What the hell is this supposed to mean?" said the tough-looking hombre in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was stabbing at the editorial page with a cold cigar.

"God forbid," said the copy editor.

"But there it is," said the hombre.

"That's what it means," said the editor. "It means 'God forbid.' 'God prevent.' Whatever."

"Then why don't we say 'God forbid?'" said the hombre, waving some clippings under the editor's nose. He sneered and read aloud. "Tribune editorial page, January 28 -- 'The lawyers swore that Mayor Richard Daley's regime was abiding by the Shakman decrees against most political hiring. Patronage? Clout? Heaven forfend!' 

"And here's one from January 7," the hombre went on. "Something about worker productivity. And then, 'Heaven forfend!' What the hell kind of message are we trying to send -- that the Tribune's some kind of goddamned hospice for archaic language before it gives up the ghost completely?"

The two-day stubble sported by his interrogator had the editor off-balance. Who was this guy? Was he one of Sam's cowboys? Or was he just another panicked suit from the old regime who'd flung off his coat and tie and gone denim to survive?

"If you wouldn't say it on a Harley you can't say it in the Tribune," growled the hombre.

The editor liked "heaven forfend!" He liked "kerfuffle." If other papers didn't use language like that -- well, they weren't the Tribune. He knew of elderly readers in Winnetka who would say the only reason they subscribed was because the Tribune used words that made them think of feather beds. He thought, "There must be a way to have archaic and eat it too."

"Sam likes it," he said. "His motto is, 'We don't eat our words. We spit 'em out.' He's looking for new language for new ideas for a new day. Retro's part of the mix."

He sensed the hombre wilting.

"This page is only the start. Business is next -- 'Bernanke lowered the prime interest rate Tuesday to forfend the economy from slipping into a recession.' Then science. 'The laboratory hopes the new vaccine will forfend an outbreak of avian flu.' Sports, of course. 'The Bears shifted to a forfend defense and gave up the winning touchdown.' Finally folk wisdom. 'Don't eat the forfended fruit.' 'An ounce of forfension is worth a pound of cure.'"

"Sam's good with it?" said the hombre, beginning to tug awkwardly at his shiny brass belt buckle.

"All the way. He says what the Tribune needs is a vocabulary that isn't tired and worn out. And, of course, some new faces in management."

"What have you heard?"  said the hombre, quaking in his boots.

Wuss! thought the editor. 

The word has its champions. "Wonderfully expressive," says one Web site devoted to language. "A wonderful word," says another. But these champions are wrong. "Kerfuffle," a currently fashionable word from Scotland once so uncommon that into the 60s there was no agreement on how to spell it, looks and sounds like one of those big, harmless animals on Sesame Street, not like what it actually signifies -- a commotion.

Unlike words that come into style because they pinpoint something, "kerfuffle" calls attention to itself instead of its meaning. It's a writer's word, not a reader's, much more useful for making a poem than an argument. And these days there's no avoiding it.

Chicago Tribune editorial, June 4: "But not everyone's convinced. Take the kerfuffle over an acclaimed children's book published last year that began with a passage about a rattlesnake that bit a dog named Roy on a body part guaranteed to draw giggles from 10-year-olds. (Hint: scrotum.)"

Tribune's Amy Dickinson, April 23: "Ten-year-olds are still learning how to communicate with each other. It can be quite confusing, and is a process of trial and error. This sort of kerfuffle is how they learn."

Tribune editorial, March 23: "Imagine the kerfuffle in Gov. Rod Blagojevich's inner sanctum when Wednesday's Peoria Journal Star landed like a depth charge."

Tribune editorial, February 23: "Strangely, amid all this kerfuffle, the Republican presidential hopeful most likely to say something explosive by accident, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, did not get in any trouble."

Tribune's Clarence Page, February 7: "On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being a minor annoyance and 10 being a complete outrage, the kerfuffle over Sen. Joseph Biden's use of 'clean' and 'articulate' to describe Senate colleague and fellow presidential hopeful Barack Obama ranks about a 2 -- although with many black Americans it is a very strong 2."

Tribune's Eric Zorn, January 9: "The famous kerfuffle when then-candidate Bill Clinton said that he'd tried marijuana but didn't inhale began on March 29, 1992 -- nearly 15 months later in the election cycle than this story has hit the national media."

And this is from just one paper, the Tribune, this year. A Google search of "Imagine the kerfuffle" turned up virtually a thousand citations. The horror!

Colleague Jerome Ludwig, who brought the matter to my attention, wonders: "Maybe it's just one of those words that's overused at the moment; like frisson was a while back." Give a president a hammer and every problem looks like a nail. Give the press a new word and every passing spat becomes an excuse for it, or every shiver of emotion.