On Language or 5 Minutes You'll Never Get Back

I am a New York Times Sunday subscriber. And as such, I look forward to reading the Times’ Sunday Magazine. However, reading William Safire’s column “On Language” is lost on me. Don’t get me wrong: I want to love it. As a writer, why wouldn’t I like taking a deeper dive into the wonderful word of words? I should like it.

A word or phrase is presented and Safire expounds on its origin, usage, and perhaps how it fits in today’s lexicon. Here’s how it opened last Sunday:

“Sometimes a phrase is around so much that it hardly gets noticed. Lexicographic research shrugs it off as either as “nonce term” –here today, gone tomorrow—or something that’s been around so long that it needs no explanation.”

So it is with let’s do this. You’ve heard it a thousand times when someone asks hopelessly, What should we do, your reply goes “let’s do this! And you show the way.

Ah, but what happens to the phrase’s meaning when the emphasis shifts to let’s do this?” The gentle instructive changes to the strong imperative; it is a whole new ballgame.”

See what I mean? We don’t go forward; instead we go backward into the phrase.

The truth of the matter is that I find it tedious, cold and distant. Ironically, those three words might also describe Safires’ former boss, Richard Nixon. Worst of all, you, nor I, will ever get this time back by doing this.