Forward is the only way we can go

This week, I offer a collection of words and phrases that made me curious and sometimes judgmental. (Like most weeks.)

LATEST PET PEEVE

I’ve been hearing going forward a lot lately.

This doesn’t refer to driving forward instead of driving in reverse. It refers to time. People have no other option beyond going forward. We don’t control time. We can’t go backward. So when you set goals, they can be achieved only in the future. This doesn’t stop people from using this silly phrase. Here are a couple of examples from The Washington Post.

I hope that research and development of drugs will be a lot more equal and equitable going forward. (It’s definitely too late to make things equal if they’ve happened already.)

[Peru’s] highest court is currently evaluating whether Congress broke the law in removing [Martín Vizcarra] from office — a decision that experts said would not be retroactive but could have implications going forward. (They sure can’t change the past.)

Winning will help the kids know they can win going forward. (This sentence as a whole is ill-formed, but the kids likely won’t win any games that they already lost.)

AMATEUR MEDICINE

One TV advertisement for a medicine includes the line, “Notify your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.”

Right. Let me take out my syringe to get a blood sample, then get out my high-power microscope and look around for evidence of a parasitic infection.

Isn’t that the job of the people in the doctor’s office, to tell me whether I have a parasitic infection?

LATEST ANNOYING FOOD DESCRIPTION

When did people start using the term scratch made?

I’m OK with “made from scratch.” We’ve heard that for ages.

The dictionary says: “In cooking, to make something from scratch means to use only the most basic ingredients, with nothing premade.”

(In the past, I’ve had people ask me which brand of cake mix I liked best. I would deliver my best icy stare and say, “I don’t use mixes.”)

So, scratch made, I think, is an attempt to make it sound similar to homemade. Or it’s a shorter way to say made from scratch.

Merriam-Webster adds that to create something from scratch is to make it without any ingredients

or materials prepared ahead of time. The scratch … originally referred to the starting line of a race “scratched” into the ground, from which all runners would be starting without a head start.

IS IT GIBBOUS?

Who knows how many times I’ve heard the term gibbous moon without knowing what it was. I finally looked it up. When it’s a gibbous moon, the moon is more than a halfmoon but not a full moon. The word gibbous comes from the Latin word for hump.

AP ON THE CORONAVIRUS

Strangest entry in The Associated Press Stylebook coronavirus topical guide: good Samaritan.

Good Samaritans have likely been around since at least the time of Samaria, which Merriam-Webster says was “a district of ancient Palestine west of the Jordan River between Galilee and Judaea.”

In the Bible, Luke wrote of a good Samaritan who “is generous in helping those in distress.”

The topical guide didn’t provide a definition. It likely was on the list so people would know whether to use an uppercase g and s.

In the same guide, the proper possessive form of virus was helpful.

The virus’s long-term effects aren’t yet known.

Add another s after the apostrophe.

LATEST LONG WORD THAT I EXPECTED TO HAVE A HYPHEN BUT DIDN’T

Doesn’t this word look freakishly long? Southwesternmost.

I thought for sure it should have a hyphen, but it doesn’t. Spoiler alert: northwesternmost, southeasternmost and northeasternmost are also legitimate words.

LATEST ON AN OLD PHRASE

Remember when you’d hear that a certain place was, say, “4 miles away as the crow flies.”

That’s a fairly useless description for any person except for the mythological Icarus, whose father invented artificial wings that allowed him to fly (and who flew too close to the sun). I’d guess people overwhelmingly don’t travel the same way as crows do. I’ll bet Google maps doesn’t have an option for as the crow flies. Or even one for a beeline.

LATEST WORDY PHRASE

An article I was reading recently said that people were making a concerted effort to do something. First, why had I never wondered what concerted meant? Merriam-Webster says it’s “something mutually contrived or agreed on.” I think it’s just as good to say the people were trying to do something. It’s a lot less typing.

LATEST PRETENTIOUS WORD SUPPLIED BY A READER (WHO ALSO THOUGHT IT WAS PRETENTIOUS)

Do people really use abode to describe a home?

Some people will say “my humble abode” in a joking manner.

Does anyone watch “Schitt’s Creek”? The Rose family might refer to their motel rooms as “my humble abode,” but it would be accurate.

But the word sounded funny in a couple of sentences I found on The Washington Post website.

Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor suddenly looks more intriguing as a potential abode of life.

But homeowners should know their abode to a degree where seemingly negligible changes in the structure stand out.

And I learned that Britain has something called the right of abode.

According to Passportia, a person with the right of abode can live, work and study in the United Kingdom without any immigration restrictions, like a U.K.-born British citizen.