Words are Important
The business world seems to generate more jargon and buzzwords than goods and services these days. Words are being misused and abused. This is a disaster because words are important. When words can be made to mean anything, they mean nothing. Without precise meaning, we can’t form rational thought and the world is lost. So, in the interest of saving the world, I humbly present my fourth installment of this series on words:
Technically
What it means
Having practical knowledge of a specialized field, usually something scientific or mechanical.
“Having been an auto mechanic for thirty years, Charlie is technically skilled. He can fix any car you bring into his shop.”
How it’s used
Somehow, the word “technically” has gotten sort of mashed up with the meaning of the word “technicality”. A technicality is something like “a distinction that only means something important to an expert”. But it goes further than that. “Technically” has somehow morphed into meaning “a kind of a thing, that really isn’t that kind of a thing because most people mistake it for another kind of a thing, and the popular opinion is the one that really matters.”
“A tomato is technically a fruit.”
Why it’s important
The implication here is that if enough people make a dumb mistake, it ceases to become a mistake, and instead becomes a fact. Enough people think that tomatoes are vegetables so they somehow enter a state where they really are vegetables even if they technically are fruit.
You eat tomatoes in a salad, and salads have vegetables, so tomatoes must be vegetables. Everyone knows that.
Of course, tomatoes that aren’t the only “vegetables” that are really fruits. Cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins … all fruits. If it has seeds, it’s a fruit. By definition.
This use of “technically” always shows a defect in thinking. Sometimes it’s used as an apology for being correct (“Sorry, but technically they speak Portugese in Brazil, not Spanish.”). I do not know why learned people feel obligated to make these concessions to the ignorant. Other times it’s a poor attempt to undermine a perfectly reasonable argument (“Well, maybe technically it’s on your side of the property line, but you can’t build a fence on my lawn.”). But no matter how many people really, really want it to be otherwise, you can’t collectively wish something into being a fact (although you might technically be suffering from some kind of mass delusion).
Image by Yvwv
