Categories: OLD Media Moves

The word "tame" and inflation coverage

Hal Morris, writing on his GrumpyEditor.com blog, wonders why the word “tame” has become common usage when describing inflation.

Morris writes, “When Grumpy Editor sees or hears ‘tame,’ he thinks of the term used to convert a wild animal (such as a bear) to a domesticated state — a definition similar to what one finds in dictionaries.

“Yet, search ‘tame inflation’ on Google and see an astonishing 2,830,000 results. Reversing the words to ‘inflation tame’ nets a higher 2,920,000 results.

“Many people — other than those writing inflation stories off government handouts — seeing higher price tags on just about everything these days substitute descriptive words other than ‘tame’ on the items.

“Those folks will be happy to know that a posting on business channel CNBC’s Web site last Tuesday, notes, ‘Inflation, using the reporting methodologies in place before 1980, hit an annual rate of 9.6 percent in February, according to the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.