A Brief Diversion
The Enormity of Your Disinterest is Devolving

ELIZABETH GEORGE
July 25, 2026

This brief diversion from more pressing political concerns (where is lightning when you need it?) deals with the English language. In a previous essay, I held forth on the singular subject of grammar as applied to the nominative first person pronoun “I” and the objective first person pronoun “me.” I may have also touched upon she/he/we/they as well as her/him/us/them but much grammatical water has passed beneath the bridge of my life at this point, and I don’t recall. I do recall that I received a message from a very nice person who pointed out that English is a living language and in this living language, we have neologisms. This is something I understand, especially since William Shakespeare (who, admittedly, has and will always have my heart) created neologisms frequently in his work. However, what we do not have is neo-grammarisms (if I myself might create a neologism there). Grammar is grammar is grammar, much the way a rose is a rose is a rose. While English is, yes indeed, composed of words, the manner in which these words are used within the structure of a sentence is governed by the rules of grammar, which is “neo” nothing at all. In other words, six million people may use “me” as the subject of a sentence instead of the correct pronoun “I”. Ten million people may use “I” as part of a compound object in a prepositional phrase instead of the correct pronoun “me.” But that does not mean that, as a result of sheer ignorance, we now have new grammatical forms. We do not. We have a dumb mistake, endlessly repeated until people begin to think that it must be correct. Those people, alas, are wrong.

Sometimes, of course, words must be created to accommodate a changing world. Especially in the field of technology this is the case, as it is in medicine and in all the sciences. When a word is created to fill a specific need or to express something that heretofore has never been expressed, we call this a neologism. (Latin scholars among my readers [thank you Sister Noel Marie] will recognize the derivation of the word neologism).

What I would like to consider is the distinction between a neologism and a common misusage that makes my skin crawl. (Admittedly, as you have no doubt noticed, I have very thin skin that is given to crawling at the drop of a linguistic hat.) The misusage of our language is becoming something of a plague upon all our houses (sorry, Shakespeare, but I couldn’t resist). Indeed, if my near-constant reading of contemporary fiction is any indication, we have reached a point at which it has become necessary for professional writers to know more about our language than their copy editors do.

Let us examine a few misusages that have been spoken and written with such regularity that they now can often be found in (I shudder) online dictionaries. There are many, but I will choose only a few, those I consider the most horrific.

Enormity: This word (hold onto your hat) means “wickedness.” It does not refer to size. It was—in the past—frequently heard in the phrase “the enormity of the crime,” and I assume that’s where the basic misunderstanding of its meaning comes from (I ended that sentence with a preposition….I know, I know, mea culpa). People began to think that “the enormity of the crime” referred to the size of it instead of its inherent evil. At this point, if one were to say “It was a crime of such enormity ….” people would naturally think it was huge and possibly historic even if it was also evil. An example would be: “The enormity of Netanyahu’s attacks upon Gaza and the Palestinian people should lead the International Criminal Court to prosecute for and convict him of war crimes.” His attacks are wicked. The are also immense.

Disinterest: There is only one way I can address myself to the misusage of this word, and I apologize in advance for having to express myself in this manner: DISINTEREST DOES NOT MEAN LACK OF INTEREST AND IT ALSO DOES NOT MEAN BEING WITHOUT FEELING TOWARD SOMETHING. (Whew. I needed to get that out of my system.) What it actually means (gripping your hat once again) is “objectivity.” Likewise, disinterested does not mean “uninterested”. It means “objective.” In other words, when lawyers are engaged in voir dire, they are looking for disinterested jurors, which does not mean they are looking for jurors who might well fall asleep during the trial, but they are looking for jurors who are objective. When people use disinterest to indicate a lack of interest or feeling towards a subject, they mean to say indifference or indifferent. Example: “The President of the United States shows remarkable indifference toward the suffering of other people.”

Devolve: This word is, alas, not the opposite of evolve although its more recent usage has the word coming the closest to what we might deem a neologism. Let me explain: evolve is used when something develops gradually or changes over time as in: “Darwin’s theory maintains that homo sapiens evolved from lower forms of the genus homo, which suggests that, contrary to the beliefs of the current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, homo sapiens and dinosaurs did not coexist although such coexistence would certainly have made for an interesting few millennia.” On the other hand devolve—in its original meaning—indicates the passing of responsibility or authority to someone or the passing of something to someone else through inheritance or succession. An example would be “The responsibility for the distribution of information on vaccines, bacteria, and deadly viruses has devolved to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose opinions on those subjects have been a source of merriment and fascination to anyone familiar with science in general and scientific research in particular.” However, in current usage, it has come to have a meaning similar to deteriorate (which, frankly, is my preferred word when deterioration is what is meant). An example would be: “To no one’s surprise, the most recent speech given by the President of the United States on the topic of the economy quickly devolved into a paean to his brilliance, courage, wartime leadership, and daily commitment to the beautification of the White House as well as Washington D.C.”

Dispassionate: This word has nothing to do with lack of passion, despite passion being part of it. It has nothing to do with lack of feeling, lack of emotion, or lack of enthusiasm. So one could not say, for example, “In my opinion, Mr. Darcy was a most dispassionate lover when it came to his first proposal of marriage to Elizabeth Bennet.” In other words, dispassionate cannot by used to describe someone whose natural reserve prevents him from exploding into words of love, devotion, admiration or anything else that Mr. Darcy doubtless felt but was incapable of saying to the woman he wished to make his wife. Instead, dispassionate—just like disinterested—means impartial, objective, unbiased, or neutral. So when looking for a referee for a soccer match (Or is it a soccer game? Forgive me, I only watch football [Go Hawks!]), one wants someone who is dispassionate in the calls he makes. An example would be, “Having decided that a red card given to a US player was not a call made by a dispassionate referee, for the first time in the history of the country, the President of the United States inserted himself into an international sporting event by phoning the head of FIFA and demanding the player be reinstated, thereby igniting the hopes of every potential U.S. Olympian wishing to be awarded a gold medal as the result of a petulant and inappropriate phone call from a self-important President.”

Snuck: Snuck not a word although I suppose one might argue that—since it is regularly used by those who have no knowledge of the conjugation of verbs—it must count as a neologism. I disagree, but you probably suspected I might. Snuck is fingernails on the blackboard for me. I used to say the following to my students: “Snuck is not a word. You will hear it all the time, even spoken by television journalists. But it isn’t a word. In this classroom, we shall hold the line in defense of sneaked.” I would also point out to them that they wouldn’t use the word puck as a past tense or past participle for peak; they would instead use peaked. Both sneak and peak are conjugated identically. So while someone might say “Donald Trump allegedly snuck into the dressing rooms at his beauty pageants in the hope of ogling a naked teenager,” the actual correct version of the sentence would be “Donald Trump allegedly sneaked into the dressing rooms at his beauty pageants in the hope of ogling a naked teenager.” Of course, we know that Donald Trump’s deep, abiding, and publicly demonstrated respect for all women and all girls would have prevented him from doing anything remotely close to violating their privacy—not to mention their bodies!—in such a manner, but I hope the sentence illustrates the correct usage of the word sneaked.

For now, I believe I have written enough on this subject. If you have enjoyed this brief diversion from political discourse, feel free to send it along to anyone else who might also enjoy a few moments away from the ugliness, anger, outrage, and violence that now appear to define life in these United States of America .

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104