FW: Enron, the verb (fwd)

[Lynne Murphy]

This was just forwarded to me by a colleague in Texas.

Lynne


----- Original Message -----___________

It's now a verb,as in, 'Take the money Enron'

By ANDREW GUY JR.

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

Enron.
Enron-ed.
Enronian.
Enron-itis.
Enron-izing.

What was once the seventh-largest company in the United States is now a
verb.
And an adjective.
A double for deception and duplicity.

Need proof? Turn on a television. Pick up a magazine. Wander out in public
and listen.
Workers these days don't worry about being fired or laid off, but about
being "Enron-ed." Politicians wonder about "Enron-izing" the economy.
Financial experts talk of "Enron-itis" when discussing the shock effect the
company's demise has had on the market. Comedians joke about the war in
Afghanistan ending soon because Osama bin Laden lost his shirt on Enron
stock.

The Enron saga has the elements of a John Grisham novel: a suicide, alleged
cover-ups and shocking revelations, firings, layoffs and sudden
resignations. There are whistle-blowers telling all, accountants pleading
the fifth, and bitter former employees who lost life savings.
And now, the company is a joke.
Literally.

"People are definitely using the word differently," said Suzanne Kemmer,
associate professor of linguistics at Rice University. "A guy I was having
lunch with recently said, 'Well, I got Enron-ized.' He meant that he was
laid off, but he meant in general terms that he got screwed."

"There's this strong emotional punch to this word because Enron has become
this big villain," Kemmer added. "And if it gets picked up by enough people
who recognize it as a good use for a specific meaning, then it enters our
everyday language."
Which is exactly what happened recently when Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle used the company's name when describing his worries about the
economy.

"I think we are slowly Enronizing the economy," Daschle said. "Enronizing
the budget."
Then, financial experts picked up on the trend, turning the company into an
adjective.
"We've seen ugly, Enron-ish sights before," Jane Bryant Quinn wrote in
Newsweek recently, referring to other failed businesses whose employees lost
out because their retirement funds were heavy on company stock.

Web sites mock the company. The most recent is slate.com, which created "The
Enron Blame Game. Where it's always somebody else's fault." The game has
pictures of key players in the Enron scandal. Point to a picture, and a
printed caption blames someone else.

To determine how a word that once stood for prestige and status morphed into
a word that now stands for deception, Kemmer said, it's important to
remember that words are simply reference points used to communicate ideas.

"Words are really neat little cultural information packages," Kemmer said.
"And words are what we reach for when we try and express a new concept or
idea. The word `Enron' has now taken on the meaning of being laid off, of
keeping things from shareholders and employees.

"English does not have this very rigid system where words do not have to
stay in their rigid forms," Kemmer said. "We have suffixes that allow us to
change nouns into verbs. We've taken a word associated when the entire
phenomenon and we've turned it into a verb to suggest an action that was
associated with that whole phenomena."

It is unclear where the name Enron comes from. Recent news reports have said
that Lay wanted to call the company Enteron, until he learned that Enteron
was a biological term for the digestive track.

A glance at the company's Web site didn't confirm the story, either. But it
did list Stephen Cooper's full title: Interim CEO and Chief Restructuring
Officer.

Enron: an adjective and a verb.

Talk about synergy.

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com |
_______________





---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320