This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Thursday 12 September 2013

positive shrinkage: a rant.

People keep going on stuff about negative growth.

Negative growth...

...hm...

...no, it's still not making any sense. Sorry.

Unless...

...is negative growth the reason why old ladies are nearly always little old ladies?

File:Old lady buying flowers.JPG
Photo: Krystian Hasterok

...is negative growth why my dress size keeps going down even though I'm certainly getting no thinner?

...or is negative growth why, over the years, the labels on identically-sized cereal packs have gone from standard to large to giant-size (though so far I've yet to come across one labelled full)?

...or, on the other hand, could it possibly be that the economists are in the midst of something so much too complicated for them to understand that putting it into sensible language defeats them?

I know where my suspicions lie.

Thing Not To Be Today: negative. This word comes from the Latin negāre, from nec, which means not, plus aio, which means I say.





 






2 comments:

  1. As a very tall person, I'm always fascinated by the idea that small people live longer (something about everyone's hearts being the same size, so the heart of a big guy like me has to work a lot harder). If that's true, it might not be negative growth but rather natural selection - us biggies are simply dying off sooner, though (thankfully) not before reproductive age has come and passed and so we're still filling the gene pool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm a rather tall person, too, Ed, and the statistics are horrifying, for women especially.

      Hey, but stats shmats...I hope to go on being annoying to the statisticians for a long time yet.

      Delete

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.