New words for a new maneuver

The morning newspaper reports that the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary have picked the new entries for their latest edition of the reference work.

By virtue of increasingly common usage, “air quotes,” for example – defined as “the gesture of raising and flexing the index and middle fingers of both hands to call attention to a spoken word or expression” – is included among the new words and phrases considered to be acceptable usage in our daily discourse.

Among other additions to the dictionary are “netroots,” defined as “grass-roots political activists who communicate via the Internet,” and “pretexting,” which means “presenting oneself as someone else to obtain private information.”

“As soon as we see the word used without explanation or translation or gloss, we consider it a naturalized citizen of the English language,” said Peter Sokolowski, an editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster.

By that standard, I am guessing it won’t be long before the Merriam-Webster gang will be adding to its collection a word to describe the mind-numbingly irresponsible habit of some drivers to compose text messages on their cell phones or perform related feats of digital dexterity while driving.

Interviewed on a national television news show last week, a California driver explained how easy it is to participate in the popular diversion. You merely grip your cell phone and the steering wheel with both hands in the 12 o’clock high position and type your message with your thumbs, occasionally looking beyond the phone to the road ahead to see if there might be anything interesting – such as a 16-car pileup – about to develop.

Apparently Left Coast practitioners of the maneuver are more adept at it than the late bloomers here in the Maine outback, as dramatically illustrated in a news story that ran in the same edition of the newspaper as the item about Merriam-Webster’s dictionary additions.

Headed “Driver crashes car into farmhouse in Newport,” and packaged with a five-column photograph showing the scattered wreckage of home and motor vehicle implied in the headline, the article was a cautionary tale about the drawbacks of so-called “multi-tasking” while operating a motor vehicle

BDN reporter Sharon Kiley Mack reported that the vehicle ran through a right-hand curve, left the road on the opposite side, crossed a side street, narrowly missed a huge maple tree, rolled over at least twice and slammed into a corner of the farmhouse, causing part of the building to collapse and came to rest upside down on the front lawn.

The lucky young driver, who walked away from the spectacular accident apparently unhurt but probably much the wiser, reportedly told a resident of a nearby home that he had been writing a text message on his cell phone when he crashed.

I’m thinking that the dictionary people who approve future new-age words or phrases to define the practice of text-messaging in such circumstances – and admitting to it afterward – might want to consider the phrase “driving while dumb.”

If ever I were to text-message while driving – which is highly unlikely, since I do not own a cell phone or any of the other obligatory electronic toys and probably never will, and wouldn’t know a text message if I saw one – you may rest assured I would never own up to it after the inevitable accident had occurred.

I’d lay it to a phantom deer darting across the road in front of me, perhaps. Or employ the old bumblebee-loose-in-the-car excuse. Blame a sneezing fit. Temporary blackout. Mild stroke. Anything but confess to driving while text-messaging.

It strikes me that verifying that one had been text-messaging on his cell phone prior to an accident is akin to a husband answering his wife truthfully when she asks him, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?”

No good can come of that. Any husband in his right mind would come up with a reply, which, though likely inaccurate, would be intended to cause no harm. Merriam-Webster long ago included a phrase in its dictionary to describe such an act of kindness.

It’s called a “white lie.” Air quotes optional.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.