Exploring the Perimeters of <i> Parameter</i>

Playing fast and loose with the language has been almost a way of life--at least a major sport--in recent years. I’m not speaking of the mindless conversational Styrofoam that pads the ramblings of teen-agers and semi-literates. I’m thinking of the words embraced by people in places of power and influence--politicians, professors, scientists, analysts of all kinds, even newspaper columnists. We tend to embrace words that have an esoteric tang--nowadays, most especially words that smack of high-tech “state of the art,” whatever that may be.

I think that probably the unrelenting profusion of parameters, to which we were subjected from the early ‘70s until quite recently, probably originated when someone heard parameter used by someone who actually knew what it meant, thought it had a high-class tone, and assumed that parameter was a really hotsy-totsy way of saying perimeter, a word we all learned in junior high as a part of plane geometry.

In fact, parameter has been misused by millions of people during the past 15-odd years to mean something like perimeter. I hope I’m right in believing that parameter has been fading rapidly and will soon pass back into its proper position in the language. My understanding of the true meaning of parameter is limited by my failings as a mathematician as well as my virtually total ignorance of crystallography. The first parameter definition in Webster’s New International, 2nd Ed. is “ Cryst. The relative intercept made by a plane on a crystallographic axis. The ratio of its intercepts determines the position of the plane.”

I’m not exactly sure what crystallography is. I do know that when I see a wine glass that has a special ineffable hue and heft and a shape that I find peculiarly inspiring, I flick the rim with a fingernail, and if the glass gives forth a mellow, musical ring, I always say, “Nice crystal!” or “Crystal. Nice!”

Obviously, relative intercepts on crystallographic axes are not in my line. When I find the time, I’ll have to do some studying.

There are also mathematical definitions of parameter. I’ve read these definitions in several dictionaries and they all make me feel either profoundly stupid or mildly queasy or both. Look up parameter in any good dictionary. I think you’ll see what I mean.

I started thinking about this sort of thing recently--just after the jury made public its decision on the trial of Oliver North. I was watching the MacNeil-Lehrer news hour, and they were airing various reactions to the decision. One man, introduced as a good friend of Lt. Col. North, defended the colonel by saying that the three charges he’d been found guilty of were “micro,” while the ones he’d been cleared of were “macro.” I’d never heard micro and macro used in quite that way before.

Micro- and macro- are what the dictionaries call “learned borrowings from Greek,” and, in my experience, they’ve always been combining forms; that is, they were parts of other words, like microscope, microphone, microcosm, macrocosm, and one of my favorites, macrology, which means “much talk with little to say.” There’s usually a “little” implied in the use of macro- and a “big” implied in micro-. Both carry dynamic functions within themselves. Lt. Col. North’s friend was speaking of issues that are “micro”--small, trifling, unimportant--and “macro”--big, important, worthy of serious consideration. There’s not much dynamism in those senses.

In microphone, you have the sense not merely of “tiny sound,” but of its function--to increase the power or range of that tiny sound. Microcosm contains within itself the notion of a larger “cosmos,” or order, that bears a relationship to the microcosm. To describe an issue, micro means merely small or unimportant; it doesn’t carry within itself the notion of a conjoined big or important issue. What micro and macro do carry within themselves is an irresistible enticement for those who want to sound sophisticated in a high-tech world--supremely state-of-the-art. Let’s face it--what is at the very core of this dazzling new era? The microchip.

I’m afraid the brief appearance of micro and macro to mean simply “small” and “big” on MacNeil-Lehrer might mean that the two words have their collective foot in the door, and we might well be hearing a great deal of them in the future. Politicians are sure to relish laying into macro government and macro taxes and piously proclaiming their devotion to “micro business.” It could prove to be a new outcropping of macrological meaninglessness.