Parameter Breaks Out of Its Perimeter

I read in The Times a sentence saying, “The parameters of the study have not yet been defined.” Then, a scant four sentences further on, “Those parameters have not yet been defined.”

The fact is that the very word parameter has scarcely been defined--not, at least, in its current sense. Parameter was once a self-respecting, proud word with a very specific meaning; but it has become a poor, flabby old creature, brought down to a gutter existence, and now misused by perfectly decent writers who simply haven’t asked the question, “What, in fact, is a parameter?”

Here are some universally acceptable definitions of the word, taken from Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1953):

“1-- Astron. An element of an orbit (Obs.)

2-- Cryst. The relative intercept made by a plane on a crystallographic axis. The ratio of its intercepts determines the position of the plane.”

3-- Math. A. An arbitrary constant characterizing by each of its particular values some particular member of a system of expressions, curves, surfaces, functions, etc. B. An independent variable through functions of which may be expressed other variables, as the co-ordinates of a locus.”

Enough of that. There’s still another definition, but it’s no clearer to my feeble understanding than the first three, and I’d have to go back to college before I could begin to understand those puzzlers.

In any case, the current use of parameter seems to have no connection at all with any of the dictionary definitions. My impression is that somehow--during the ‘60s, I think--the word must have been discovered by someone with a taste for highfalutin lingo--probably one of those guys who think at this point in time is an improvement over now , and at that point in time is a better way of saying then. (I’m guessing it was a man. I think women, as a rule, don’t do so much linguistic posturing as men.) Damn if parameter didn’t catch on. Now its customary use--that is, by those of us who are neither crystallographers nor mathematicians--seems to be to express some sort of general term vaguely allied to boundary. It has lost its integrity, and, as so often happens when words get knocked about, we’ve pummeled it out of shape, leaving it at the mercy of whoever wants to use it for his own purposes.

I have more dictionaries than most people, but the only one I have that attempts to define the newest meaning of parameter is my new American Heritage, Second College Edition. Their first definition is the mathematical one; the second tries to deal with what has happened since the ‘60s, saying, “Informal A. a fixed limit or boundary; constant. B. a characteristic element: terrorism as a parameter of this generation. “

Then it notes that “this scientific term has been adapted to general usage. It is sometimes used in the sense of ‘a limit or boundary’ (perhaps influenced by perimeter) : We must try to stay within the parameters of the present budget. They want to narrow the parameters of public debate. Violence and rebellion are parameters of modern life. None of these examples is acceptable to a majority of the Usage Panel.”

I’m a member of that usage panel, and I’m pleased that I am among that majority. But I’m afraid that usage panels don’t have much influence on the language. I suppose everyone who writes about usage gets letters saying things like: “Can’t you please do something about the young people who say, “He goes” when they mean, “He says”? or “Please do what you can to stop people from saying, “between she and I” instead of “between her and me.”

We can write about such things until our typing fingers wear down to the knuckles, but language moves about in the mouths and writings of people, and people are not so easily reined in. The sad truth is that most people don’t really care much about the integrity of words.