“Kerfuffle”

We don’t mean to raise a fuss, but why is kerfuffle elbowing its way into American letters?

The Wall Street Journal is partly to blame for this twee word’s infiltration. When it called the controversy that eventually led to the Feb. 11 retirement of CNN’s news chief a mere kerfuffle, the faithful in the conservative press were outraged — a kerfuffle within a kerfuffle.

The Times, too, helped spur the cloying of America. When political analyst Susan Estrich publicly voiced concern over the dearth of female opinion writers at this paper, a kerfuffle commotion erupted. A Google search of “Estrich” and “kerfuffle” turned up 152 relevant results, one fewer than an etymologically more appropriate scan of “kerfuffle” and “Prince Charles.”

British and Commonwealth papers have been littered with this Scottish colloquialism since the 1960s, particularly when describing tiffs within the royal family. Canadian scribes insert it into sports coverage, though it seems a prissy word for any quarrel involving hockey players.

Our huff over kerfuffle is that there are already words for this land’s contretemps, donnybrooks and brouhahas.

The kerfuffle craze must be quashed, so that we in the media can go back to our dust-ups. — Brendan Buhler