The current obsession with "Gone Missing"

[Robert Hartwell Fiske]

"Gone" or "went" missing is dreadfully popular today. Everyone from
reporters on "CNN" to detectives (or their writers) on "Without a Trace" now prefer
it.

People are so dull-witted and impressionable that, today, in this country,
the popularity of "gone" or "went missing" has soared. Words like
"disappeared," "vanished," "misplaced," "stolen," "lost," "deserted," "absconded" are
seldom heard today because "went missing" has less meaning, or less exact
meaning, than any of them, and people, especially the media, perhaps, are
afraid of expressing meaning. What's more, "went missing" sounds willful or
deliberate, and, indeed, sometimes that connotation is accurate, but the child
who has been kidnapped is hardly agreeable to having been so.


>From "Silence, Language, & Society" by Robert Hartwell Fiske


TEN YEARS OF VOCABULA: _www.vocabula.com_ (http://www.vocabula.com)

The August 2009 issue of The Vocabula Review marks our tenth year of
publication. That's 120 issues since September 1999. In recognition of this, the
August issue will be devoted to "The Best of Vocabula,"


Robert Hartwell Fiske
Editor and Publisher
The Vocabula Review
_http://www.vocabula.com/_ (http://www.vocabula.com/)


Vocabula Books:
_http://www.vocabulabooks.com/_ (http://www.vocabulabooks.com/)


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