Analytically speaking, some haven’t proper sense of ‘sense’

Many a television commentator – including the esteemed Jim Lehrer on PBS – uses an irritating phrase when interviewing some disaster victim: “Can you give us a sense of what it was like…?”

Why can’t these folks merely ask someone to describe the event, to tell of the floodwaters rising in New Orleans or the wake of destruction after an Indiana tornado or about coming upon a hideous crime scene?

Why does CNN’s golden-haired boy Anderson Cooper (or is it Anderson Little, I get them confused) feel he must ask people involved in a tragedy to “give us some sense” of what is going through their distraught minds?

What does the phrase mean anyway? Makes no sense to me, and why can’t the media use a little common sense in questioning such people on a live television broadcast?

“Sense” is one of those words we use in disparate ways: Someone might not have a lick of sense but a great sense of humor. He may have such a sense of timing that he senses trouble ahead. She may, indeed, have a little sense of guilt, asking herself what is the sense in even pondering the word and wondering when she will come to her senses.

Bryan A. Garner in “A Dictionary of Modern American Usage” makes his own sense, if we follow him closely:

“Generally, when sense means logic or sensibleness, it’s followed by in, as in what’s the sense in delaying any further? [An exception is in the phrase ‘make sense of this’.] When sense denotes meaning, it’s followed by of as in ‘what is the sense of that word?'”

Now, are we clear on what the word means and when it’s to be used? Perhaps in writing we are, but what about speaking? Or singing, as in John Denver’s “You Fill Up My Senses”?

That’s a totally different sense, of course, as in our sense of smell when we walk through the woods during mid-November, taking in the various scents of sour, wet leaves and smoke coming from the chimneys.

Scents? Sure, lots of them since it’s almost Thanksgiving and Mainers are already brushing in the woods and leaving behind smells of tipped fir and pine. There is the scent of chrysanthemums still blooming in pots out back and the scent of spices in the mulled cider on the stove.

And, since we’re trying to make some sense of how we sound to others whose language is not our own, we must throw into the mix yet another word.

When asked what this particular column might be worth, someone conceivably could say, “A couple of cents.”