The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (9 page)

Robert Schroeder

Trenton, New Jersey

Connect!
Why did the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis, whose accuracy in writing about the framers of the Constitution remains unchallenged, tell his students fanciful fabrications about his supposed military service in Vietnam?

Edmund Morris, a historian whose fictionalization of parts of his biography of Ronald Reagan drew critical fire, tried to explain in an op-ed article Ellis’s strange departure from the truth. “I am loath to speculate what private motives Professor Ellis may have had,” Morris began, and then speculated, “but as a fellow communicator, I can understand his urgent desire—Only
connect
!—to convey the divisiveness of the ’60s to a generation rendered comatose by MTV.”

The literati immediately caught Morris’s allusion to E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel,
Howards End
: “She would only point out the salvation that was latent … in the soul of every man. Only
connect
!” Forster’s exhortation is repeated later to emphasize the desperate need for communication among human beings: “Live in fragments no longer. Only
connect,
and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

That extended meaning of
connect
goes far beyond the original “to conjoin, link, fasten together.” In the lexicon of reaching out, it has become the vogue term for “to establish rapport” and beyond that, “to feel a surge of mutual understanding,” sometimes all the way to “have a sensation of instant intimacy.”

On Valentine’s Day, Jeff Wise of the American Dating Association told ABC’s Alison Stewart, “The No. 1 question-complaint that we get from people is ‘I went on a date, had a great time, we totally
connected
—but he never called me back again.’ “

What does it mean to “totally
connect
“? A youthful source tells me: “The phrase can be used for friends or lovers. It implies not only a certain commonality but also a genuine comfort level. It’s when someone is easy to talk to or hang out with; there’s a certain flow or vibe. In the past, we called it ‘chemistry’ or ‘a spark of electricity.’ If a date didn’t work out, it’s not my fault or his fault, we just didn’t
connect
.”

Source of the new sense, my young friend thinks, “is from something high-tech, like an Internet connection. We say, ‘How fast is your connection?’ To
connect
implies speed, immediacy, getting in touch globally—something you want to happen right away, that you want to feel without missing a beat. It causes a bit of pressure, this expectation to feel something right away.”

The need for speed in the connection between individuals is influenced by the demand for fast action from computers. “For many young people, there are those moments of frustration when they start up their computers and have to wait to get online,” notes Christine Lindberg, managing editor of Oxford University Press’s American dictionaries. “Finally you’re satisfied, you’ve gone online, you’re connected, you’ve got friends out there in the ether waiting to
connect
with you. And anywhere they go, online or off, teenagers feel that potential of making an instant connection.”

When young people take up with a word, can politicians fearing a
disconnect
be far behind? “A relationship was begun,” said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois about the meeting between President George W. Bush and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “and that is critically important for those two leaders of Russia and the United States to
connect
.” Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, reported that “both men
connected
on a kind of sense of humor.” And for years, though not in a strictly interpersonal sense, candidates for office have been measured on their ability to “
connect
with the voters.”

Before its intergenerational sense took over, the verb had a variety of meanings. Jonathan E. Lighter’s
Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang
lists the sports use, “to hit a baseball hard,” citing pitcher Christy Mathewson’s 1912 “When [Joe] Tinker …
connects
he hits ’em far.” Another informal sense is “to succeed,” as in the novelist James T. Farrell’s 1933 use, “My wife and I want a kid … but … I just can’t
connect
.” Best known is the underworld use, “to make a purchase of illicit goods, especially narcotics.” This was immortalized in noun form in the 1971 movie title
The French Connection
.

These days, the verb’s popularity illustrates the need not to feel alone. That desire never to be out of touch is touching. “In teen-think,” reports Sheila Anne Feeney of New York’s
Daily News,
“owning a pager means you are so important you cannot be disconnected from the collective pulse of your peer group even for a moment. You Are
Connected
.”

Control Freak.
William Hague, leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons, rose to denounce the prime minister: “Tony Blair is the
control freak
who has lost control.” In an editorial about the devolution of power to Wales, Britain’s
Daily Telegraph
noted, “Tony Blair has acknowledged that he has occasionally acted like the
control freak
his opponents accuse him of being.”

The charge has equal puissance on this side of the Atlantic. The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, used the phrase to describe his Republican counterpart, Trent Lott. And during the recent presidential primary elections, the
Austin American-Statesman
quoted an unidentified aide to Governor Jane Dee Hull of Arizona as derogating Senator John McCain in these words: “The senator gets very heated about things. He’s a
control freak
.”

The favored political attack phrase means “one obsessed by the need to dominate; a person driven by the urge to be in total command.” It is not as serious a blast as
totalitarian
and does not carry the sexual overtone of
dominatrix,
but—by suggesting the control is for control’s sake rather than for any rational purpose—imputes more neuroticism than
micro-manager.

That is because
control
as a noun has become a double-edged sword. To be
out of control
is to approach what used to be called “raving mad,” but at the other extreme is the grim-faced, white-knuckled
control freak,
with his obsession to extend untrammeled authority into every detail of others’ lives.

Meanwhile, the meaning of the slang noun
freak
—first recorded in Finley Peter Dunne’s 1895 “Mr. Dooley” in the
Chicago Evening Post
as “the deluded ol’
freak
“—has also been getting quirkier with the passage of time. A century ago, it meant “eccentric” or “abnormal,” as in the carnival
freak
show
exploiting specimens of obesity or dwarfism, and later as an adjectival synonym for “aberrational,” “deviant” or “hard to imagine,” as in “
freak
accident.”

In the 1960s, it was adopted in drug lingo as a verb, to
freak out,
meaning “to rave under the influence of hallucinatory drugs.” It was then applied as a noun in
speed freak
and
acid freak
. In his 1977 book,
Dispatches,
Michael Herr, who had covered the Vietnam War for
Esquire
magazine, applied the term
control freak
to “one of those people who always … had to know what was coming next.” The term became favored by Hollywood screenwriters and producers dealing with that war; it was repeated in the 1978 film
The Deer Hunter
and in 1979’s
Apocalypse Now
. By 1986, the meaning softened to “enthusiast, aficionado, maven,” and Steven Spielberg freely confessed to
TV Guide,
“I’m a
control freak
.” (In the same way, language mavens call themselves
word freaks
.)

In current use, the meaning of the combination of
control
and
freak
has veered toward “neurotic.” In the
Boston Globe
in 1992, Matthew Gilbert noted how crowds prized the singer Madonna’s “
control-freakishness
.” Writing four years later about Barbra Streisand, the
Sunday Times of London
could not decide whether she was “America’s greatest female singer or a power-mad woman whose
control-freakishness
makes working with her all but impossible save from a kneeling position.”

That latest interpretation of
freakishness
as “off the deep end” is why Senator Daschle, when asked about his use of
control freak
about Senator Lott, hastily backed off: “I say it in a light-hearted way. I don’t mean he is a
freak
. I’m just saying he’s a control
nut
.” In Senate rhetoric, evidently
nut
is far less pejorative than
freak
. That reflects general usage; to be
nutty
is to be mildly crackbrained and is often used in self-description of too-earnest advocacy: I readily call myself a “privacy
nut,
“ but would not flagellate myself as a “privacy
freak
.”

A
nut
is a
freak
you kind of like. Loosey-goosey descriptive lexicographers, with their anything-goes passivity, deride prescriptive pop grammarians like me as
control freaks,
but I look bemusedly at those round-heeled dictionary writers as
common-usage nuts.

Coordinates.
I was in a meeting with Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel laureate who has long been preeminent in biodefense. When asked by another scientist where he could be reached the following week, Lederberg passed along a card with a crisp “Here are my
coordinates
.”

There’s a useful word for these times. Instead of saying, “Here’s my business address, along with e-mail address, private e-mail address, fax number, pager number, cell phone, office phone, home phone, pager-scheduler and the digital answering machine with caller ID next to my bed,” I can now lump together the whole modern communications litany with “my
coordinates
.” This locution will prove especially helpful to people whose business cards run three pages.

The origin of the noun is in geometry. George Crabb in 1823 defined
co-ordinates
(now dropping its hyphen) as “a term applied to the absciss and ordinates when taken in connexion,” later better known as the magnitudes that determine the position of a point; geographers and navigators still later used
coordinates
to describe the use of longitude and latitude in locating a spot on the globe.

People in the military, accustomed to map terminology, have taken to using the plural noun to mean “precisely where a person is.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, asked, “Do you have any better handle on where bin Laden is?” replied, “I have a handle, but I don’t have
coordinates
.” (This is not to be confused with the sense used in the fashion world, as “colors and materials that blend harmoniously and are intended to be worn together.” Rumsfeld wears suits and rarely appears in
coordinates
.)

Recent citations in the extended sense of “how to reach me” are Canadian: checking on her Quebec “citizenship,” Arabella Bowen wrote in the
Gazette
in Montreal in 1999 that a voter-registration official looked at her documents and “confirmed my
coordinates
.” A year later, Rosa Harris Adler wrote in the
Ottawa Citizen,
“I walked into one of the dry cleaners in my new neighborhood … and gave the guy behind the counter my
coordinates
.”

That sense of personal location has flashed around the world. In Moscow this year, at a news conference called to expose corruption in the Ministry for Atomic Energy, Ivan Blokov of Greenpeace charged that “pressure was put on all the members of that faction who voted against the amendment. I can give you the
coordinates
of people who can confirm this.” The Russian word used was
koordinatu
.

The origin may be in satellite coordinates, the space equivalent of latitude and longitude, which news media need to get a “feed” from a satel-lite; the phrase is bandied about by White House press secretaries. An alternate theory: “
Coordinates
has been part of the
Wired
parlance since at least 1996,” reports William O. Goggins, deputy editor of the magazine
Wired
. “My gut read”—presumably his instinctive response—“is that an, if not the, origin of this locution is ‘Star Trek.’ Think transporter room.”