Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two Wrights did make an airplane.
Flying around the country on book tours and speaking series, I have been frequently exposed to “plane talk,” the loopy jargon of the airline industry. To learn how flighty and fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants is our English language, take off with me on a typical tour day:
On the way to the airport, my shuttle bus enters rush-hour traffic. Despite the word hour, I notice that, in most big cities, rush hour usually lasts more than 60 minutes. The bus gets caught in a big traffic bottleneck. But it’s really a small traffic bottleneck because the bigger the bottleneck, the more easily the fluid flows through it. Yet you never hear anyone say, “Boy, this morning I got caught in one of the smallest traffic bottlenecks of my life!”
At the terminal, I ask the airline official behind the counter if I am on a nonstop flight. She says that I am not. That’s good because I want the flight to stop somewhere. The trouble with nonstop flights is that you never get down.
At any rate, the voice on the public address system announces that it’s time to preboard. Preboard strikes me as something that people do before they board, but I notice that those who are preboarding are actually boarding.
Then it’s time for the rest of us to get on the plane. I don’t know about you, but I don’t get on a plane; I get in a plane.
As I am about to get in the plane, one of the flight attendants cautions me, “Watch your head.” I rotate my cranium in every direction, but I am still unable to watch my head. Trying to watch your head is like trying to bite your teeth.
A little later, the flight attendant assures us that “the aircraft will be in the air momentarily.” I know she’s thinking that momentarily means “in a moment,” but I am among the vanishing band of Americans who believe that momentarily means “for a moment.” The thought of the plane soaring upward “momentarily” fails to soothe my soul.
On the flight, I pray that we won’t have a near miss. Near miss, an expression that has grown up since World War II, logically means a collision. If a mass of metal hurtling through the skies nearly misses another object, I figure it hits it. Near hit is the more accurate term, and I hope to avoid one of those, too.
I hear a voice on the public address system informing me that “in about 20 minutes we’ll be landing in the Philadelphia area.” In the area? How about if we actually land in Philadelphia, preferably at the airport?
Then comes the most chilling moment of all. The dulcet voice on the airplane intercom announces that we should fasten our seat belts and secure our carry-on bags because we are beginning our “final descent.” Final descent! Hoo boy, does that sound ominous. And that descent is aimed at a (gasp!) terminal!
Incredibly, the aircraft touches down with all of us alive and begins to taxi on the runway. Now the same voice asks us to keep our seat belts fastened until the aircraft “comes to a complete stop.” That reassures me, as I wouldn’t want the vehicle to come to “a partial stop,” which, of course, would be an oxymoron.
Finally, the plane does come to a complete stop, and we are told that we can safely deplane. After that, I’ll decab, decar or debus and enter another hotel. The next morning, I’ll wake up to face another day of plane talk.
Please send questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com verbivore.com