war on whatever

(from WSJ)

Word Flu
By LIONEL SHRIVER
October 22, 2005; Page A6
We've had the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism. It's time for the War on Whatever.

I am not being glib. I have declared war on the word "whatever." More virulent than E coli, more contagious than bird flu, this verbal virus has infected not only the entire population of the United States, but has also reached pandemic proportions in the U.K. (In his last bestseller, the novelist Nick Hornby used four supposedly distinctive first-person voices; and all four narrators, from tough-cookie kid to middle-aged bag, said whatever.) It was bad enough when this pestilence spewed from my friends' mouths like toads. Yet when Donald Rumsfeld testified to Congress this summer that one of the armaments being sent to Iraq was "whatever," I knew we had a national emergency on our hands.

Mr. Rumsfeld's usage was the bug's most innocuous. These days, "whatever" ends a series to mean "and so forth"; alternatively, "some other example I can't think of"; most of the time, "uh." Indeed, if you declare, "I'm going to do a little shopping, meet some friends, whatever," what does the W-word contribute besides a hackneyed gloss of modernity? The adolescent's double-whammy of fillers -- "He's, like, whatever" -- is so impeccably inarticulate as to constitute a triumph.

A cook might commend baking a cobbler using "blueberries, peaches, whatever," and you could infer "or other seasonal fruit." Nevertheless, one would be hardpressed to make heads or tails of a recipe that listed its ingredients as "1/2 c. sugar; 1 T. cornstarch; 2 c. whatever."

An equally commonplace usage is far more exasperating. I will ask my husband, "Do you want pork chops or pasta for dinner?" "Whatever," comes the reply. Various translations present themselves: "I don't give a damn"; "Don't bother me with such trifling domestic considerations"; "I'm not really sure what I feel like eating tonight"; or perhaps most credibly, "I'm not paying any attention to you, and I don't plan to." In any event, I still have no idea whether to take the chops from the fridge or put water on to boil. What would you think of George Bush if you asked him what he plans to do with Social Security, and he said, "Whatever"?

Granted, both eras and locales have their verbal tics. The Irish, for example, are given to the locution, "He speaks grand English, so he does." The compulsively reflexive syntax is charming, at least at first. But "whatever" has grown blandly ubiquitous, and charming it is not. The cool, too, need the clueless. If everybody uses it, it cannot be hip.

I can testify to the fact that, once contracted, this particular virus is fiendishly difficult to purge. Not long ago I realized (too late!) that I had started saying "whatever" myself -- which was a little like looking down and discovering my body covered in suppurating pustules. Take courage! After months of mindfulness, I vanquished the disease. Yet a word of warning, for there is a downside to taking the cure: You will grow hyper-alert to whatever-speak, and everyone else will drive you nuts.

Ms. Shriver's last novel was "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (HarperPerennial, 2004).