Some uninformed anti-American peeving
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Ignorant prescriptivist peeving has recently been dying out in English-language mass media, or so it seems to me. But George Will is holding the line, as Viseguy points out in a comment on yesterday's "Vaccination" post. Will's July 30 piece, "Five words that today are gratingly misapplied or worn out", has the sub-head "The massive vibe shift is one of the only big developments in American English. In fact, it’s iconic".
The opening sentence emphasizes both the alleged recency and the U.S.A.'s alleged culpability:
“When we Americans are done with the English language,” wrote Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936), “it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.” Let’s survey some recent damage.
It won't surprise our readers that Will's allegations are false, or at least problematic. The five "damages" that he complains about have all been around for several decades at least, if not several centuries, and several of them seem to have started in Britain. In all cases, the Brits need to share the blame (or credit) for spreading the denigrated usages.
Will leads off with his fifth peeve:
The fifth-most misused word in what remains of the tattered language is “massive.” It is an adjective applied to anything big, even if the thing has no mass.
The OED's sense I.3.a for massive is glossed
Of an immaterial thing: grand or impressive in scale; substantial in import or effect. Now frequently in weakened senses: far-reaching, very intense, highly influential.
…with citations going back to 1581, and plenty more British examples from past centuries:
1581 R. Mulcaster Religious skill is farre more massiue.
1855 A. Bain The..sensation of chillness..is..not acute but massive and powerful.
1892 R.L. Stevenson All the activities of my nature had become tributary to one massive sensation of discomfort.
Next comes his fourth peeve:
The fourth-most shopworn word is “unique.” It is applied to any development that has happened since the person misusing “unique” was in high school.
The OED's sense 3.a. for unique is glossed
That is the only one of its kind; having no like or equal; unparalleled, unrivalled, esp. in excellence. Later also in extended use (especially with premodifying expressions): uncommon, unusual, remarkable.
A couple of citations from British writers in past centuries:
1782 T.Burgess The impression with which he set out, by which the Poem becomes more unique and perfect.
1823 European Magazine & London Review The saloon is fitted up in a very unique manner.
1824 B. Disraeli Such is a slight sketch of Embs, a most singular, indeed a unique spot.
Let's skip ahead to Will's number 1 complaint, at the end of his article:
Today’s most promiscuously used word is “vibe.” It probably is used so often by so many because trying to decipher its meaning is like trying to nail applesauce to smoke.
There's no question that the use of vibe has been increasing, as Google Ngrams shows — but over the past couple of decades, not the past few months or years.
And America is not (entirely?) to blame. The OED treats the relevant sense of vibe as an abbreviation for sense 3.d. of vibration, glossed as "An intuitive signal about a person or thing; (plural) atmosphere" — and the earliest citation for that sense is from Oscar Wilde in 1899:
There is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations.
Earlier than that, we get George Eliot in 1863:
The words arose within him, and stirred innumerable vibrations of memory.
And a bit later, James Joyce in 1922:
You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration?
So Wilde, Eliot, and Joyce antedate the Beach Boys?
The earliest OED citation for the vibe abbreviation is from the Sunday Times in 1967:
We're not getting the right vibes.
…with the next one involving a quote from John Lennon in a 1971 publication:
‘You give off bad vibes.’ That's what George said to her [sc. Yoko Ono] and we both sat through it, and I didn't hit him, I don't know why.
I'll spare you Will's peeve number 2 (the figurative sense of iconic) and peeve number 3 ("one of the only"), but the facts are similar — frequency has been increasing, but the senses that he objects to have been around for a while, and Americans and Brits share the credit.
Some past George Will posts:
"Fact-checking George F. Will", 6/7/2009
"Fact-checking George F. Will, one more time", 10/6/2009
"Exploring the cliche-by-president matrix", 10/8/2009
"Another lie from George F. Will", 5/7/2012
"More BS from George F. Will", 8/28/2015
"George Will discovers the idea of 'facts'", 11/13/2015
"'Evidence, data and reasoning'", 2/17/2017
ajay said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:12 am
Surely "vibrations"/"vibes" meaning "just the general feel of something that you pick up without knowing exactly what you're picking up" comes from spiritualism/occultism?
See this sort of nonsense for example https://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/blavatsky-speaks/blavatsky-on-occult-vibrations.pdf which includes quotes from 1888.
Cervantes said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:17 am
You can argue that the word "unique" would be more useful if it were restricted to meaning "sui generis." In my own writing I impose that rule. But people can do what they want as long as their interlocutors understand them.
cameron said,
August 6, 2025 @ 10:36 am
some of the increase in the use of plural "vibes" has to reflect the invention and proliferation of the musical instrument the vibraphone. a vibraphone is often referred to "vibes" and someone who plays the vibraphone is a "vibes player". versions of this instrument were being made in the teens of the last century, but became very popular starting in the 1930s
the names "Vibraphone" and "Vibraharp" were registered trademarks, so other manufacturers making versions of the instrument resorted to "vibes" as a generic term
Coby said,
August 6, 2025 @ 11:05 am
Of late, George Will has been making more sense than before on political issues. I suppose he had to reconfirm his conservative-pundit credentials by following in the language-peeving tradition of William Safire and David Brooks.
Stephen Goranson said,
August 6, 2025 @ 11:19 am
Vibe and vibes are also short for vibraphone(s). Emil Richards played "overdubbed vibraphones" on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966).
Wikipedia: on "May 27 – Western ["Part C", "Chorus", and "Fade Sequence"] (this session produced the third bridge and chorus fade heard in the final master)"
Matthew J. McIrvin said,
August 6, 2025 @ 11:54 am
Will is mistaking a word connoting imprecision with being imprecise.
Mark Liberman said,
August 6, 2025 @ 12:01 pm
@ajay "Surely "vibrations"/"vibes" meaning "just the general feel of something that you pick up without knowing exactly what you're picking up" comes from spiritualism/occultism?"
No doubt, though there are also echoes from music and physics…
The James Joyce quote is from Chapter 15 of Ulysses — a bit more context, from Elijah:
Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator.
Matthew J. McIrvin said,
August 6, 2025 @ 1:57 pm
I am also reminded of Donald Sutherland's anachronistic hippie character from "Kelly's Heroes" complaining about "negative waves".
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 6, 2025 @ 2:07 pm
I remember around 2010 noticing that the word "iconic" seemed to be going up in frequency. And an ngram search shows that it did in fact start rising around 2000, and has continued since then.
I also think there are some new uses of "vibe" that have taken off in the past few years – particularly "vibe shift" and "vibe check": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vibe+check%2C+vibe+shift&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
I think that in the couple months between the 2024 election and the 2025 inauguration, a lot of political blogs wrote explicitly about a "vibe shift", and since George Will is a political columnist, it might be this in particular that he was reacting to as a supposed increase in the use of the word "vibe".
Tom Houpt said,
August 6, 2025 @ 2:23 pm
Another recent usage is "vibe coding" for computer programming that (over) relies on help from AIs.
David Morris said,
August 6, 2025 @ 3:37 pm
> iconic
During a short stint as a magazine sub-editor (2018-19), my editor had a list of words which he thought were overused and wanted us to reword if possible. One of those was 'iconic'. One day an article I was subediting had it, and I mentioned it to him. He said something to the effect of “Oh, ‘iconic’ is the cliché du jour”.
HS said,
August 6, 2025 @ 8:47 pm
"Vibe" (especially in the phrase "it's the vibe", generally used humorously or ironically) became very common in Australian and New Zealand English following the release of the classic Australian comedy movie The Castle in 1997 (which coincides with its sharp increase in frequency in the Google Ngram).
I don't know whether The Castle is well known in America – see here and here.
wgj said,
August 7, 2025 @ 12:53 am
If the US constitution is allowed – nay, celebrated – to reach for "a more perfect union", then surely every patriotic American must be free to go for "very unique".
ajay said,
August 7, 2025 @ 5:00 am
I am also reminded of Donald Sutherland's anachronistic hippie character from "Kelly's Heroes" complaining about "negative waves".
Double pedantry alert:
You will be delighted to learn that the all-time Ngram peak of usage of the phrase "negative waves" was in 1935, and that Oddball (in a film set in 1944) is therefore indeed being slightly anachronistic, by around nine years.
Anachronism is something that's too old for the setting; say, a cavalry charge in the Afghan War. Prochronism, which is what people normally mean when they say anachronism, is something that's too new for the setting, like a tank at Waterloo. So anachronism may be incongruous but is still possible; prochronism is impossible.
I always remember it because Two-Tails' officer in "The Jungle Book" calls him a Pachydermatous Anachronism, which he is.
Jon said,
August 7, 2025 @ 11:39 am
When my granddughter was 5 or 6 she asked me what 'iconic' meant, and showed me a quiz she was doing on her tablet. It showed cartoon pictures of six hats, and asked "Which hat is most iconic?"
I was completely baffled. In what sense could one hat, without any other context, be regarded as more iconic than another?
Allan from Iowa said,
August 7, 2025 @ 3:54 pm
That would mean. which hat has the most hat-like vibes.
Michael said,
August 7, 2025 @ 5:21 pm
I found Cervantes' comment intriguing, because it implies that a word is more "useful" when it is used less. I'm not certain I disagree, but it struck me as an interesting seeming-paradox.
DDeden said,
August 7, 2025 @ 5:27 pm
Perhaps an iconic hat was misinterpreted as related to conical?
I noticed that the use of "eclectic" dropped off as "iconic" became more in advertising.
A new slang term (to me): Rizzy" is a slang term, likely derived from "rizz", which is short for charisma. It's used to describe someone who is charming, affectionate, or seductive.
Ajay said,
August 8, 2025 @ 1:17 am
I'd say an iconic hat is one with the most symbolic or representative value. Like a hat that a famous person is famous for wearing.
I met a retired army officer once who was mildly famous for not wearing a helmet, in one famous battle in particular -, he wore a black woolly hat instead and told his men to follow the hat.
As it happened, I met him in winter and he was wearing a black woolly hat. "Is that… the hat?" someone asked him in a hushed voice and he replied, no, *the* hat was safe at home. This was merely *a* hat.
Not an iconic hat, you see.
Ajay said,
August 8, 2025 @ 1:20 am
I don't think eclectic means the same as iconic
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 8, 2025 @ 7:29 am
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if "iconic" went away as a word in general parlance and remained within the bailiwick of religious devotion. An "icon" (eikon), like a religious statue or painting, is meant to stir mystical contemplation with its use of non-representational imagery (e.g., relative size of figures in proportion to their theological significance), symbols evoking significant aspects of a Saint's life (e.g., St. John the Baptist's fur cloak, St. Peter's keys), and colors (e.g. blue for the Theotokos).
In other words, precisely the opposite of what a photo of some flash-in-the-pan celebrity is meant to invoke.
ajay said,
August 8, 2025 @ 9:29 am
Benjamin: but this is exactly the idea that talking about "iconic hats" or whatever is trying to get across. The hat is so associated with its wearer that you can represent the wearer solely with the hat.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 8, 2025 @ 12:43 pm
Ajay,
I suppose you're right. In trying to find some way to keep the sacred separate from the profane, the pickings are slim: "synecdochic"? (doesn't really roll off the tongue); "metaleptic"? (sounds vaguely neurological); "metonymic"?
Killer said,
August 8, 2025 @ 2:38 pm
Is Disraeli's "Such is a slight sketch of Embs, a most singular, indeed a unique spot" a persuasive example of "extended use … uncommon, unusual, remarkable"? I would have guessed that "a unique spot" would fit "the only one of its kind" definition. It's the "most singular" that feels like "very unique" to me.
Brett said,
August 12, 2025 @ 2:38 pm
The first small peak in the graph for vibes is actually exactly where you might expect it to be if it corresponded to an increase in references to the vibraphone. The Modern Jazz Quartet was founded and recorded "Bags' Groove" in 1952. Milt Jackson's virtuosity led to a surge in interest in the vibes.
However, that bump starting the early 1950s might also just be a coincidence.
Theo said,
August 14, 2025 @ 12:02 am
George Will has been writing a column for some fifty years. Whew.
Have always loved reading him — even when disagreeing — as he always has quotations and historical references. It may be a mere rhetorical trick, but it is always nice. One feels that history matters — and is useful in trying to make sense of the world, or persuade others of one's sense of history, or argument. (He does work at that Church of England/Scottish Presbyterian thing, though, allowing himself the small flourish of a bow-tie.)