The other day I was talking with a friend about words that people use in ways that show they don’t understand their meaning. I’ve talked about some before, such as “phobia” and “exponential.” Here are some more.
ballistic: A ballistic course is one followed by an object that isn’t under acceleration except by gravity. The laws of physics say it follows a parabola, moving horizontally at a constant rate and being vertically affected by a constant force (assuming it doesn’t go so high that gravity significantly weakens). Someone who “goes ballistic” is enraged and suddenly follows a different course. A truly ballistic person would coast along and follow a smooth course, eventually coming back down to earth.
quantum: Quantum effects occur at a sub-microscopic scale. A quantum leap, properly, is the smallest change a particle or system can undergo, yet people use “quantum leap” to mean a huge, sudden change.
360: If you “do a 360,” that means you turn 360 degrees, continuing on the same course after scaring everybody by spinning in a circle. It’s often used to describe a reversal of course, which should be “do a 180.”
mano: This word is Spanish, so English speakers have some excuse for getting it wrong. “Mano a mano” means simply “hand to hand,” so it should refer to unarmed fighting. I often see it used in cases which aren’t hand-to-hand in any sense. If someone wants to talk to you “mano a mano,” they must want to converse in sign language.
theory: The creationists’ favorite. “Evolution is just a theory.” So is gravitation, but you don’t see many creationists stepping out of twentieth-floor windows. (If they did, they’d go ballistic.) A theory, in the scientific sense, is an explanatory framework. In common usage, it often means a tentative explanation; “I have a theory about why that happened.” That helps to explain the confusion, but conflating the two ways of using the word leads to fallacious thinking.
skeptic: A skeptic is, or should be, a person who examines a claim carefully and raises objections to it. The objections may or may not be valid, but they’re based on serious thought. The skeptic may not be against the claim in question but just uncertain about it. Someone who opposes a view simply because it’s scary, weird, associated with the political opposition, or blasphemous doesn’t deserve the label.
steep: A “steep learning curve” usually means something is hard to learn and will take a long time to master, but a learning curve graphs a measure of learning against time. If the curve is steep, that means people learn fast! It’s a curve with a slight, gradual increase over time that indicates a subject is hard to learn.
crescendo: In Italian, “crescendo” means “increasing.” In music-Italian, it means “gradually increasing in volume.” The expression “rise to a crescendo” means increasing toward an increase. I’ve never seen “fall to a diminuendo,” which would make as much sense.
Here are some from the computer world:
hard drive: The term “hard disk drive” once distinguished a storage disk drive with an inflexible platter from a floppy disk. But who uses floppies anymore? Electromagnetic disk drives, SSDs, CDs, DVDs, and USB sticks are all “hard” by normal standards.
cut: We often see “cut and paste” used when nothing is deleted from the original. It should be “copy and paste” in those cases.
operating system: Blame the software vendors for this one. A computer’s operating system is the low-level software that lets everything else run, providing users and applications with controlled access to files, devices, and network connections. Because of software bundling, “the latest OS” typically includes applications and libraries that sit on top of the OS.
cyber: “Cyber” comes from “cybernetics,” an early term for computing theory. Today it gets tossed around as an adjective or prefix that means something like “computer-related and scary.” It’s not wrong, but it’s often used to alarm people. Examples are “cybercrime” and “cyber scam.” “Computer crime” and “online scam” sound less like jargon. The scariest of all is Star Trek’s “Borg,” which is short for “cyborg,” which in turn is short for “cybernetic organism.” “Cyber” as a noun is even worse.
Some links to articles I’ve posted before on word misuse:
Miscellany
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When I think of a steep learning curve, I don’t imagine the same graph that you describe.
For me, the Y-axis is the amount of effort required to understand the material (to some level of proficiency). The X-axis is time, but a finite amount of it rather than an ongoing elapsed time. It is the constraints on time that make the curve steep. (E.g. Learning a new programming language vs. learning it by Monday.)
If there are no other constraints the X-axis maximum is “remainder of the person’s life”.