I shuddered recently when a TV reporter, talking about a house fire, said the first floor was "decimated." Even though I’ve now accepted the word "decimate" to mean a significant decrease in a population, I have not accepted it as a synonym for "ruin." Originally the term referred to the Roman military practice of killing every tenth soldier to instill discipline in mutinous units, although for several hundred years it has been used to also mean any drastic reduction in numbers. Today it is commonly used to mean a sudden population decrease, such as "the Indians were decimated by diseases" or "Asiatic cheetahs have been decimated by poaching and habitat loss."
Another definition I've come to accept is the current use of "tarmac" for any and all airport aprons. Technically the word means a tarmacadam paving material (capped Tarmac is a trademarked bituminous binder) used for roads, runways, and airport aprons. So, to a purist, saying that the President was greeted on the tarmac is similar to saying he was greeted on the concrete (assuming he was standing on concrete paving) or, if perhaps he were in rural Texas, greeted on the dirt. To most people today, however, "tarmac" means the area around a parked plane, no matter what that area is paved with. I’ve decided to join all the VIPs there, on the tarmac.
Can any writers tell me why "swath" has become an overwhelmingly popular synonym for "area," even when the area described is not at all a long, narrow strip. I fear I'm fighting a losing battle on this one.
However, I'm standing firm behind a "lectern" (the vertical furniture used by a speaker) and on the "podium" (the platform on which a lectern might rest). After all, evolution, even of language, is a gradual process.
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Comments
Sep 6, 2007 8AM #
I always get a chuckle out of the media's use of the word "tarmac". I have flown Boeing 737's for a major airline out of Ronald Reagan George [my own personal name for the airport, believing that National Airport on the west side of the Potomac River is the only airport named for two presidents and why should we drop Washington's first name) Washington National Airport for 25 years and never once have I found the word "tarmac" in my manuals nor heard "tarmac" used by the tower controllers when referring to the apron or ramp. Of course sometimes we pilots refer to large airplanes by the substance of which the aircraft is composed, such as "heavy metal", but a controller using "tarmac" for the apron while talking to a pilot taxiing an airplane on the ground would be like an approach controller radioing to a pilot in one aircraft that he has "metal" at "10 o'clock, 5 miles, level" when pointing out other traffic to him.
Hutch Kinsman
B-737 Captain DCA USAirways
Arnold, Maryland
ps. A few years ago I told my son that we were looking to buy a "house on the water". He is still looking for that perfect houseboat.
Sep 6, 2007 8AM #
Great to get a pilot's perspective on "tarmac." I also heard from a colleague here at the Geographic whose grandfather was in the paving business. Her family has been trying to correct the misuse of the word for years.
Sep 6, 2007 8AM #
The first time I remember the word tarmac used to describe the area where a plane sits is in the following: "U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem had been murdered by the Hezbollah Shi'ites who hijacked TWA Flight 847. The world had watched, horrified, as Stethem's corpse was thrown out of the plane onto the Beirut Airport tarmac." That was sometime during the 1980's. It seems ever since then tarmac is synonymous with runway.
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