Nuptial Vowels

I think I’ve commented before about the phenomenon one encounters increasingly on the cable news channels: a new word or term is floated by one commentator and, within two weeks, it’s being uttered by every talking head twenty-four-seven, as the phrase has it. I saw this happen over the course of the past few weeks with the verb “double down.” I had never heard it on air until last month, and now I’m hearing it all the time. Yesterday, I heard it used on four separate occasions.

This mindless mimicry is bad enough, but what’s worse is that, over the course of a week or so, the words start to wobble and yaw until they lose their original, and very precise, meaning and transmogrify into something else entirely. This has been the case with “double down.”

“Double down” is a term used in blackjack, and it means doubling your original bet after you’ve received two cards but before you’ve been dealt your third. By extension, when it is used idiomatically, it means “to double or significantly increase a risk.” As a gambling term, of course, the connotation of risk is at the heart of the word.

Yesterday, I heard a politician on cable news say that, once we understand the policies of the opposing party, we’ll walk into the voting booth and “double down” and vote for him. I guess what he meant to imply was that we would enthusiastically pull the lever for him (with double the force because double the enthusiasm?). What he did imply is that, having once taken a risk by voting for him, we might as well blow the whole wad and vote for him again out of sheer hopeless desperation.

One can only hope we’ve heard the last of “double down,” but I wouldn’t bet on it.

–Dennis