Apr 14, 2015 3 min read

If the English language isn’t on its deathbed, it must surely be in the ICU. And even an unprecedented joint effort by Highmark and UPMC isn’t likely to save it.

Only last week, I heard two examples of English’s death rattle in a single newscast. The first came in a story about reported sightings of an alligator in the Monongahela River. Alligator sightings are always suspect, especially given the urban legends of pet alligators that, after being flushed down the toilet, grow to inordinate size in the sewers of major cities. We want to believe, so, using the same part of our brain that sees elephants in clouds and Jesus in toast, we make a log floating down the Mon into a gator. An eyewitness account made me even more skeptical.

“I was walking down by the river, and I seen this l’il baby duck floating along, and I said, ‘That’s cool.’ Then I seen it get tooken under.”

Had I been the reporter who interviewed this guy, I’d have slappened him silly.

Yet, perhaps he grew up before there was an English language app available for smartphones, so maybe I should be a bit more forgiving. I’ll be less so with a seemingly more educated public official interviewed about public efforts to rejuvenate a one-block section of West North Avenue on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

The section is anchored by the Garden Theater, a former movie house opened in 1915 but closed in 2007 after spending most of its golden years as a porn palace. Various efforts to upgrade the block that began in the 1990s have not borne fruit. But that’s about to change, a spokesman explained, ending with this hopeful statement:

“We’re on the 5-yard line, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

This is, of course, a mixed metaphor, one that brings to mind visions of a football game played in the Liberty Tunnels, or a locomotive steaming toward the end zone at Heinz Field. And though the speaker’s train of thought jumped a switch and went barreling toward a completely different destination, no verbs were hurt in the making of this oopsie.

Like most mixed metaphors, this was at least humorous. Yet, it still doesn’t top a mixed metaphor crafted nearly 40 years ago by the leader of our nightclub band. Being a group of five men and one woman, most of our arguments ended in a 5-to-1 vote. This happened not because we men were sexist or misogynistic, but rather because this particular female vocalist was, in musical terms, stupido.

I can’t recall the exact argument, but midway through it, our exasperated leader said, “We’re like five spokes on a wheel, and we’re all trying to get you to come over to our side of the boat.”

Perhaps the greatest mixed metaphor of all time, ladies and gents. So great was it, in fact, that all of us stopped, mouths agape, to honor it for several seconds. Then we went on arguing and the final vote was – wait for it – 5 to 1.

Yes, I’m aware that there are greater problems in the world than incorrectly conjugated verbs and mixed metaphors. But it’s disheartening to someone like me, who revels in hearing the whir of the perfectly meshed cogs of words that drives language forward.

As the cop said to the stripper he arrested, “It’s just two much, too bare.”