A WORD, PLEASE:The stinky stages of change

For most of my life, I’ve lived in apartments. So moving into a house 2 1/2 years ago represents a change that has taken some getting used to.

The differences between the two lifestyles have been well-documented by every comedian who thinks it’s funny to hear an upstairs neighbor flushing a toilet in the middle of the night or to see a 90-year-old Hungarian woman’s housecoat blow open as she’s fetching the newspaper.

But while the visual and auditory differences in lifestyle are well known, there’s another sensory difference that seems to get a lot lower billing: the difference in smells. For example, whereas my last apartment offered a potpourri of neighbor smells including burnt toast, marijuana smoke and spices that must have been smuggled into the country while sewn into women’s clothing, my house has a smell I find even more troubling: skunk.

Skunk smell is much less offensive than it’s reputed to be — at first.

And I’ve got to admit that the two black-and-whites I saw waddling down the alley a few weeks ago were pretty cute in a “run for your life” kind of way. But when the smell of skunk seeps into your bedroom from somewhere outside at least once a week, it becomes more offensive to a lifelong apartment dweller than even the laughter of children.

So, in honor of the darling little stink-making animals that have made suburban living so hard to swallow, I offer this column on “skunked terms.”

I’ll let Bryan Garner of “Garner’s Modern American Usage” define this term:

“When a word undergoes a marked change from one use to another — a phase that might take 10 years or a hundred — it’s likely to be the subject of dispute. Some people (Group 1) insist on the traditional use; others (Group 2) embrace the new use, even if it originated purely as the result of ‘word-swapping’ or ‘slipshod extension.’”

Take the sentence, “The data on skunk homicides suggests they occur mostly in the suburbs.” How do you like the subject/verb combination: “data suggests”? Would you prefer, “data suggest”? If so, you’re a member of Garner’s Group 1, likely to insist that “data” is a plural — the plural of datum.

And you would insist that “data” take a plural verb: “The data are convincing.”

But perhaps you’re in Group 2, whose members spent most of their early teen years giving wedgies to anyone who would use a word like “datum.”

You, then, are perfectly comfortable with using “data” as a sort of mass noun and giving it a singular verb: “The data is convincing.”

Either way, you’re the victim of a skunked term. Yes, “data” started as a plural. But it’s in transition.

And most authorities now accept it as a singular — a mass entity, so to speak. But people who remember the time when this was a no-no, or who went out of their way to learn the difference, continue to look down their noses at anyone who follows “data” with a singular verb.

An even skunkier term, in my opinion, is “media.” Traditionalists insist that it’s the plural of “medium.” And a plural being a plural, traditionalists would say: “The media are biased.”

Language liberals argue that “media” has indeed evolved into a word that sometimes refers to a singular entity. And most dictionaries and style guides allow this usage. “The media is biased.”

Other skunked terms include “hopefully,” “enormity,” “effete,” “decimate” and “transpire” — all words that are in stinky stages of transition.

How should you deal with these terms? Well, if you’re cheeky like me, you can use them however you like, armed with enough style guides to defend yourself against anyone who’d call you wrong. But if you’re a little more cautious, you might want to avoid such odorous words altogether.