Can overuse of a word cheapen its meaning and impact?

Ted Nugent - hero?

Kathleen Harris - hero?

Rosa Parks - hero?

This question - Can overuse of a word cheapen its meaning and impact? -– is one I've thought about on numerous occasions over the years but mainly it comes only in response to a few key words.

One of those words is hero. Killfle recently seeded this good piece that spells out the issue – with soldiers, firefighters and police officers protesting they are not "heros" for doing their job.
If we refer to every action they do as heroic does it cheapen a true hero like this guy, the one who rescued teenagers from a school bus? I think it does or has the potential to do so. Yes, technically, the word means the same thing as ever but each time someone uses the word does it mean the same or does it lower the bar for a true action of heroism? I'd argue that it does.

I just did a vinestalk search for hero. Go ahead and do it yourself by clicking here and tell me if that word isn't being tossed around a bit too freely.

Let's look two other related examples: Genocide and holocaust. Have there been other genocides in history besides the Holocaust in Germany? Definitely. Actions in Darfur are appropriately being called a genocide and I was pleased to see an exhibit at Darfur was addded to the Holocaust Museum before I visited it recently.

Definitely. But each time pro-lifers refer to abortion as a genocide or people refer to other events as a holocaust or genocide does the true impact and meaning of the word – let alone your thoughts on the events themselves – change? I'd argue that it might.

As I said in Brian Ford's thoughtful, helpful article earlier tonight when I see someone mentioning Hitler in Newsvine, in an article or, more often, in a discussion I think of Godwin's Law and decide it's time to bow out of the conversations. Once people or groups are being compared to Hitler or Nazis discussions are usually past the saving point. And I'm concerned about how often that is happening here.

The wonderful, funny, brilliant Sarah Vowell did a great piece (you can read it here) once about how certain people have been referred to as the "Rosa Parks of... Here is an excerpt:

A street performer in St. Augustine, Fla., is challenging a city ordinance that bans him from doing his act on the town's historic St. George Street. The performer's lawyer told the Florida Times-Union, "Telling these people they can exercise their First Amendment rights somewhere other than on St. George is like telling Rosa Parks that she has to sit in the back of the bus." (Which is, coincidentally, also the argument of another Florida lawyer, this one representing adult dancers contesting Tampa's ordinance outlawing lap dancing.)

Call me picky, but breathing second-hand smoke, unfair dairy pricing, and not being able to mime (or lap dance), though they are all tragic, tragic injustices, are not quite as bad as the systematic segregation of public transportation based on skin color. And while fighting for your right to lap dance and mime and breathe just the regular pollution and not the added fumes of cigarette smokers is a very fine, very American idea, it is not quite as brave as being a middle-aged black woman in Alabama in 1955 telling a white man she's not giving him her seat despite the fact that the law requires her to do so.

Does any of that change the true meaning of what Rosa Parks did? It was still an act of great bravery and yet when people refer to Ted Nugent, Kathleen Harris and others as the Rosa Parks of a certain group is that not diminishing in some way her accomplishments? I think it is.

I'll conclude this thought piece with one of my biggest pet peeves: the word "tragedy." The word tragedy has been overused so much that it is almost... no, see, I almost called it tragic but that wouldn't work.:) hard to separate "true" tragedies from those less, well, tragic. And yes I think I just mangled the English language but there's a reason for that: As with heros, we - as viewers of tv, listeners of radio, readers of newspapers, magazines, the Internet - are constantly being bombarded with descriptions of people as heros and, yes, events as tragic.

And so we come to my pet peeve - writers telling us what is tragic. A house burned down, for example and in the first three paragraphs the word "tragic" or "tragedy" will be used to define the death of their pet goldfish, Fishy. Is it a terrible thing? Yes. Is it a tragedy on the par with, say, the explosion at Bhopal that killed nearly 3,000 people?

A police officer saving a cat from a tree is not a hero. If the cat dies it's sad but it's not as tragic as civilians being killed daily in the war. Yes, I understand, it's all subjective. To the cat owner the cop is a hero and the cat's death would be a tragedy. But in the big picture I think we should be careful how quick we are to use these words.
Remember Jessica Lynch? She was a hero... and then she wasn't... and then well, who could keep track of all of those stories that conflicted? Did having those labels help anything except assisting readers in understanding that someone was lying about something and it took years for the truth to come out about her.

Readers are not stupid - that's what I'm really trying to say here - and can decide for themselves whether someone is a hero and whether an event is a tragedy.

When I'd write my news stories I'd keep words like "hero" and "tragic" out of my story. The readers can decide if something deserves that label.

But I think if we throw some of these words around too much the true impact will be lost.

Does that mean I'm suggesting we censor our speech. No. Does it mean I think it's good to reserve the use of certain words for when they are truly warranted? Definitely.

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