I'm introducing a new category called "loose language" in which I will complain about careless usage and assorted other instances of mind-numbing abuses of our native tongue that I come across while prosecuting the daily routine. I was inspired by the current cloying ubiquity, in Minnesota journalism, of the adjective "massive," usually in connection with the recount of ballots in our US Senate race. The effort is massive.
While I was typing that paragraph, I heard someone being interviewed on NPR say that the United States is a "massive borrowing nation."
Now, "massive" is connected to "mass," so I think it is suspect when applied to incorporeal concepts such as the effort required to hand count 2,900,000 ballots. But, even when applied to things with mass, the word seems to have become nothing more than a hyperventilating synonym for "big" or "lots." The United States is a big country that borrows lots of money.
Edmund Wilson, in The Bit Between My Teeth, devotes three essays--"Words of Ill Omen," "A Postscript to Fowler: Current Cliches and Solecisms," and "More Notes on Current Cliches"--to my new category. He discusses "massive" in all three, and speculates on the role that the doctrine of "massive retaliation" enunciated by John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's secretary of state, may have played in the teeming frequency of this word--which, he further notes, occurs four times in David Copperfield and three times (twice in one paragraph) in a contemporaneous short essay by Lionel Trilling. (The Bit Between My Teeth is a "literary chronicle" of the period 1950-1965.) Well, the beat goes on, and, whatever the original cause, I attribute the massive overuse of "massive" to the tendency toward puffery--the desire to be noticed and the accompanying need to exaggerate. It's the same instinct that leads local news anchors and others to resort, for example, to "totally destroyed." Formerly, "destroyed" meant "destroyed," but now apparently it means "partially destroyed," thereby requiring "totally destroyed" when the thing is, like, really totally wrecked.
Words through loose use lose their edge. When the trend turns massive, meaning is altogether lost.
By the way, George Packer has a nice compilation of some words that worked overtime during the past campaign season. And speaking of Packer, check out this exercise in expert vituperation. The subject is deserving.