Pick up any issue of The New York Times (I take the Times as as an example because it is probably the bestwritten paper in the country) and you’ll find that certain writers are starting to use a new, not generally known vocabulary. Sometimes I don’t know what they’re saying. When I was growing up, newspaper writers wrote English that was crystal clear, but now getting through a story or a review is a task because words you’ve never seen smack you in the face. They are guaranteed to jolt the reader. In the Times, this is often true of movie, stage and literary critics, and sports writers.
Take the word “tanking” that appeared recently in a sports story. Didn’t know the meaning and couldn’t find a trace of it, not even in slang dictionaries. Finally I found it in an English reference work, “The Oxford Essential Dictionary of New Words.” “Tank” is Scottish and means “to defeat heavily.” Would you have known that? Not me. Despite this trend to odd words, Times writing is still the best in newspaperdom.
