Opinion: Reference this!

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When I was young and not yet 20, I used to mock my elders for their antique vocabularies. My mother called the refrigerator the ‘ice box.’ The aged nun who taught me seventh-grade math referred to automobiles as ‘machines.’ One of my grandmothers used the words ‘authoress,’ ‘poetess’ and (more offensively) ‘Jewess’ and ‘Negress.’ The other admitted that she was born in the year Nineteen-aught-eight. Older relatives who grew up in a German neighborhood in Pittsburgh called taverns ‘beer gardens.’

Now middle-aged, I find myself bemused by what I consider ugly neologisms. I’m not talking about computer abbreviations (lol) or teenage lingo. ‘Proper’ English has taken on weird new forms. In my youth, the word ‘behavior’ was singular, ‘partner’ was not a verb and you ‘referred to’ something. Today, the behaviors of well-educated people include partnering with stakeholders (not the villagers who chased Dracula) and ‘referencing’ an event or article.

I’m especially agitated by the use of ‘reference’ as a verb. I suspect it originated in business English, whereas other atrocities (‘behaviors,’ ‘role models’) have the odor of the sociology classroom. Whatever its origin, the verb ‘reference’ has established itself even in The New York Times, or at least on its baseball blog. The other Times’ Josh Robinson noted that the first pitch at the Mets home opener was thrown by Tom Seaver. Robinson continued: ‘Asked if he was surprised that the Mets had invited him back, Seaver referenced his own special status in Mets history. He is, after all, their only Hall of Famer.’

Language changes and crankiness are occupational hazards of growing old (or becoming, ugh, a ‘senior’). But linguistic behaviors like ‘referenced’ and ‘behaviors’ ought to be put on ice.