May 30, 2008

“He has a photogenic memory.”

“I’m even more impressed that a camera can capture it.”

Perhaps everyone does it once or twice throughout the course of a career.  You know how it goes.  A person tries to use a word he should be familiar with and winds up butchering it into a word that doesn’t exist.  Sometimes, the word is legitimate but carries a different meaning than intended by the speaker.

Just last week, I was with a group where one of the individuals kept intending to use the word ‘resonate’ but constantly said ‘resignate’ instead.  No one said anything the first time.  As the usage (or should I say misuse?) continued, it became too difficult to correct.  A sampling of the sentences we heard throughout the day follows:

·         “That just won’t ‘resignate’ with the customer.

·         “You need to speak with enough passion to make it ‘resignate’.

·         “If it isn’t ‘resignating’ with them in the first five minutes of the presentation, it never will.”

After hearing the newly coined word for most of the morning, we ‘resigned’ (pun intended) ourselves to putting up with it the rest of the day.  

Most of the time, the offender in these cases has no idea that he is either creating new words or misusing an existing one.  Such was the case several years ago when I heard a salesman, in an attempt to describe one of his customers, say, “He has a photogenic memory.”

A colleague, known for being merciless, also happened to be in the room at the time.  He quickly commented, “I’m even more impressed that a camera can capture it.”  As you might expect, the salesman didn’t catch the sarcasm.  Apparently, it just didn’t ‘resignate’ with him.