Opprobrious vocabulary

IT’S NOT that great a fall from adulation to “approbation.” What Woody Allen (“Next Stop, Barcelona,” by Rachel Abramowitz, Aug. 10) got and richly deserved was mass opprobrium. That must be what Rachel Abramowitz meant. Is opprobrium going the way of nonplused? I am, well, genuinely nonplused at the degradation of the English language in leading newspapers. We won’t even talk about TV.

Stan Shatenstein

Montreal