Mea Culpa: a fish called Lazarus and a word that should be extinct

In a “news in brief” item about the sale of the fossil of a fish called Lazarus, we said coelacanths were thought to be extinct until one was discovered on a South African fishing trawler in 1938, “setting the scientific community abuzz with theories over its role in the evolution of fish into terrestrial animals”. 

We ought to train ourselves not to use the word “community”; it is a vague, useless word that renders any sentence lifeless. What is wrong with saying “setting scientists abuzz with theories”?

Not former patriots: In an article about US citizens who moved abroad after Donald Trump was elected president four years ago, we referred to an organisation called US Ex-Pats and Allies Canada, for people who had moved from the US to Canada. It is in fact called US Expats and Allies Canada, “expat” being short for expatriate, meaning someone who lives outside their native country (patria, or fatherland). Ex-pat makes it sound as if they are ex-patriots, which I am sure they are not. Apologies to Jonathan Holiff, who founded the group. 

Cut up: We wrote in a report of a rugby match of a penalty kick “dissecting the uprights”. I quite liked it, but, as John Schluter pointed out, I think we meant bisecting. Dissect, to cut apart, is not exactly wrong, but to bisect an angle in geometry means to draw a line that divides the angle exactly in two. That was the sense of precision that I think we, and the kicker, were aiming for.  

Blue sky thinking: We used “skyrocket” as a verb a few times last week. We said “as coronavirus cases skyrocket across the US…” and in another article that the second wave of the virus was “sending unemployment levels skyrocketing”. 

In pre-decimal journalese, the opposite of “plummet” was simply “rocket”, but word inflation has added the “sky-” prefix. I suppose it does sound more dramatic, but it doesn’t seem necessary, because we are not talking about one of those rockets on wheels, trying to set a land speed record.  

Move the marsupial: A rare sighting of a forbidden word, and in a headline too: “Europe’s demand for kangaroo meat and pelts is fuelling the slaughter of millions of the iconic marsupial.” I think the technical term for this is a desperate attempt to avoid repeating the word “kangaroo”. A better way would have been to shift the kangaroo to the end of the sentence: “Europe’s demand for meat and pelts is fuelling the slaughter of millions of kangaroos.”