| “Cute,” she said sarcastically, when I told a friend that the term “SCORPION,” used by the Memphis police unit that killed Tyre Nichols (blog post of January 29), was an acronym for Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace to Our Neighborhoods. “Cute” seemed exactly right, a good word for acronyms, slogans and images or a persons who look attractive and non-threatening, but might turn into big trouble, a real scorpion. Words, we all know, can delude and so can acronyms. “Cute” should be a warning signal about words, images, slogans or acronyms that can delude both speaker and listener. . The “cute” Memphis acronym got me thinking about the deceptive power of language to which “cute” sometimes calls attention. It appears to be a shortened form of acute, used at first for diseases that were not chronic. Then it came to be used as a synonym for sharp or smart. Only relatively recently has it come to mean pretty or or more precisely attractive and smart but not really threatening. A Google NGram shows something more about the word: It wasn’t much used before the late twentieth century, then around 1980 it took off in popularity, including, it seems, as a term for inanimate things, cuddy teddy bears and rubber duckies and the like. Now we need it, to use sarcastically for things designed to reassure us, numb our alertness to danger, make us think we’re safe at home surrounded by those cuddly teddy bears and rubber duckies. We need “cute” to ring the alarm bell. When we hear that word it should warn us about something that looks attractive and non-threatening but might just turn into a real scorpion. . |