A Fulsome End

Christmas Eve is not an ideal time for curmudgeonliness, but every Advent season needs a villain, and I can Grinch it with the best of them when the moment demands.

I come not to denounce Christmas and all the Hoos in Hooville, but rather for rhetorical inflation. It has been a lot more than transitory of late. America’s chronic manhandling of English—by which good, useful words, particularly adjectives, are devalued by misapplication and overuse—has been claiming too many victims, too quickly.

Take “fulsome,” a real corker of a word. From the time it arrived in the 13th century, it suggested that what was being described was “plump, well-fed.” It was a way of describing something that was excessive, like a too-big dinner that left one nauseated, in a way that was “offensive to taste or good manners.” 

As time passed, the word came to be particularly associated with flattery and praise, an understanding that lives on, albeit far down the stack, in the dictionary definition of “fulsome,” in this line from the great A.J. Liebling’s The Sweet Science from 1949: “an admiration whose extent I did not express, lest I be thought fulsome.” But certainly late into the 20th century it was always understood as something so rich, so sweet, so voluptuous that it was just too much. 

It is a foppish word, holding on to the archaic Middle English spelling with the missing “l” and the “e” at the end. It’s a word that I picture in the frilled shirt and big, silly wig of Restoration-era London. “Fulsome,” for sure, is a dandy.

But by the 1990s, despite the best efforts of William Safire, “fulsome” was being drained of its character and utility by corporate and governmental types who just wanted a grander word for “complete” or “thorough” or  “exhaustive.” 

Now it seems to be more often found in its incorrect form, even in places where they should know better. 

Words often get new meanings. Take the long struggle of “literally,” which, in recent decades, crossed over from strictly being an antonym for “figuratively,” to—depending on the context—being a synonym. “It’s literally a nightmare in there.” Hyperbole claims another victim. We mourn its passage for the sake of clarity, but we really, truly, genuinely have lots of useful words to replace it. 

Fulsome isn’t coming to mean the opposite of itself; just a wan, washed-out version of its original identity. Like an executive taken out of her or his smart business suit and put in synthetic athleisure wear with soft shoes, fulsome was dumbed down. “To whom it may concern” became “You guys.”

I am at the risk of being fulsome in my discussion of  “fulsome,” for a couple of reasons. 

First, this is my last of these columns for The Dispatch. After nearly four years and almost 200 visits with you on Mondays or Tuesdays, it’s time to wrap it up. My first of these was a lamentation of a republic hobbled by “millions of nincompoops,” so it’s fitting then that I would end on a curmudgeonly note, too—Christmas Eve or not.  

I’m looking forward to new opportunities in the wider world and a different role at The Dispatch. More on that in the New Year, but I’m pleased to stay part of the family in one way or another, and certainly always as a proud subscriber.

But this run of columns has reached the end. And a column is a place for a writer to share his or her opinions, even (maybe especially) when they are unpopular or unfashionable. So I am using that privilege one more time to get back on my hobby horse about the abuses of our wonderful language.

But as I looked over these many weeks and months, something else came through: We are, or at least have been, living in a very fulsome age. So we are much in need of that word at maximum strength just now.

The mode of the late teens and 20s so far has been too much. Yes, in the person and palace of our former and future president and his courtiers, but all around us. We are in a time of extremes, politically, emotionally, behaviorally, and in our appetites. Modesty in design, apparel, language, and deportment has been taking a real beating at least since the post-recession early 2010s.

When we look at the opioid crisis, the rise of political violence, the coarsening of our discourse, and the general brazenness of people in public life, we see an American people who do not have a good sense of “enough.” 

The Marie Kondo decluttering craze—coincidentally, of about the same vintage as the first of these columns—was part of what I hope is a long and effective backlash against the too-muchism of our time. And I am very proud to be a part of that backlash in my work at The Dispatch, the Marie Kondo of news sites. While other outlets, both new and reimagined, have tried to do more, more, more, The Dispatch tries to focus on its core mission and be excellent in all that it does. Amen to that.

A news outlet cannot be your family, nor is it a replacement for a personality. It is not your tribe or your political identity. It is, one hopes, a place to get reliable information, bracing opinions, and context that a news consumer can take back into her or his life to be a better citizen, neighbor, co-worker, family member, and person. The news is a tool, not an end unto itself. 

For many in the news business, the aim since the internet turned the world upside down 20 years ago has been to cultivate ideologically siloed superusers—addicts who provide a narrow but reliable audience. What I have found at The Dispatch has been the opposite. I have encountered a remarkable diversity of views and attitudes from my readers here: nationalists, conservatives, liberals, and progressives. And that is all the more remarkable because this is a subscription site, so very few of you got here by accident.

The quality of the journalism, the restraint of the writing, and the modesty of the ambitions could be appealing to anyone, regardless of their views. And that’s a beautiful thing. 

The success of The Dispatch says something very good to me about the chances that we may be entering a less fulsome age.