Because words mean things

The use and misuse of language (more specifically, American English) has been a favorite theme of mine over the years. I was fortunate to have both high school and college teachers who emphasized precision, and were vigilant about exposing smoke and mirrors before grading down for it (remember Mark Twain's quip about the difference between lightning and "lightning bugs"?).

Here's a bookmark for variations on the theme of words meaning things in a clear and commonly understood way, rather than as Lewis Carroll's version of Humpty Dumpty or a rousing game of "Calvinball" would have it:

• Lots of people are writing about "lockdown," but the linked essay is the pithiest I've seen
• Maureen Mullarkey tackles love and hope to wonderful effect in one ambitious essay
• Dennis Prager has some wise words about the difference between ignorance and evil

So much for the heavy lifting. There's fun to be had on the lighter side of the ledger, also:

• Here's Jeffrey K Mann on the problem with saying "People of Color"
• Glenn T. Stanton makes a case for taking the Q out of the "LGBTQ" abbreviation
• Jeffrey Lord explores shifting definitions of "tyranny"
• I wrote four years ago about how "community" had been watered down
• David Warren explains "free speech" as what you have when you're not noticed
• Fantasy novelist and former journalist John C. Wright muses about words a lot
• "Meritocracy" is one of the words that needs a second look, given current events
• Ditto (on that second look) for "accountability"
• Victor Davis Hanson performs a near-clinical dissection of "elite groupthink" 
• Ann Althouse on the use and misuse of metaphor

Remember Janis Joplin singing "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" in that great old song by Kris Kristofferson? Well, she was wrong, and Kristofferson wrote that evocative line as something that Bobbie (or Bobby) McGee's paramour would say while looking backward with regret.

A parting thought on this subject: With the exoneration of General Michael Flynn in (some of) the news as I write this, the redoubtable Katie Pavlich took issue with former president Barack Obama's oft-repeated claim that his administration was scandal-free. Her objections to that are reasonable, but it turns out that what Obama actually said was "We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us." And if he learned to parse words as carefully as we might surmise, then his statement leaves wiggle room: who's to say Obama was embarrassed by things like Fast & Furious or Benghazi or the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS? He might not have been, either by temperament or because he knew that allies in the media were willing to carry water for him.

UPDATE. May 30: Voice matters, too. And when passive voice is used to obscure agency, it can be dishonest. Look no farther than the New York Times for examples of that.