This week we’re going to look at certain words recently used by various news outlets and, ahem, I’ll try to not go off on some tangent or contradict myself like I did last week. I’m passionate. Don’t judge me. Here goes.
First off, I laughed out loud when I read a recent newscast’s chyron that had obviously been written by someone who wanted to make things perfectly clear. It read: “Trump requests April 2026 trial date (not a typo).”
Chyron (pronounced “kī rän”) itself is an interesting word. While most people know that it’s the name of those captions that are superimposed over the lower part of a video image (usually during the news), not many are aware that there is actually a company, Chyron Communications, behind the name, and it’s been in business since 1966.
The news from Georgia is that the former president and several of his associates are being charged under the state’s RICO statute, which of course made me wonder what that acronym stands for. RICO, it turns out, is short for The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, which allows prosecutors to connect crimes that have a common objective into one case.
If you’re tired of listening to politicians in general, here’s a great way to solve that problem. According to syndicated columnist Froma Harrop all you have to do is “gray rock” them. In other words, she suggests dealing with them by simply responding “with bland non-reaction.” (We used to call it “ignoring.”)
Another colorful political term caught my eye recently when I read that our Maine U.S. Rep. Jared Golden is a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, which of course sent me searching for the reason why they call themselves that.
It turns out that the group, which is a caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives made up of centrist members of the Democratic Party, originally met in an office that had a painting by Louisiana artist George Rodrigue of a blue dog on its wall. (Others insist the group’s name originated because the group felt like a dog that had been left out in the cold so long it turned blue.)
“Wish cycling” it turns out, is what we’re doing when we put something into the recycling bin hoping it will be recycled even though we’re not sure it can be. The news piece using that term was zeroing in on those ubiquitous red Solo drink cups that, even though they have the recycling symbol on them, can’t be easily recycled. They are made of polystyrene, the No. 6 plastic that toys and even Styrofoam are made of.
That familiar and often misleading recycling symbol of a triangle that’s made up of three arrows looping back on themselves in a clockwise direction is known as “chasing arrows.” The symbol, which was inspired by and bears a strong resemblance to artist M.C. Escher’s 1961 illustration “Mobius strip 1,” was designed by University of Southern California student Gary Anderson for the first Earth Day in 1970.
Another new-to-me word showed up in a recent newspaper article about an insurance company that was assessed a fine for its practice of “upcoding.”
The piece explained that the company would “upcode” by categorizing “patients’ historical conditions, such as for cancer, stroke and heart disease, as current health conditions to obtain money from Medicare that it was not entitled to receive.”
Finally, it turns out that the medical community is now naming the latest strains of COVID. Here are a few to watch out for this season: BA2.86 (Pirola), EG.5 (Eris), FL.1.5.1 (Formax) and XBB.1.5 (Kraken).
All those mutations are enough to make me consider getting a booster shot since I don’t want any of those nasty things coming after me. Especially the one — Kraken — named after a legendary sea monster.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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