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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09wwln-safire-t.html">I normally wouldn't post the whole article, but this is just fantastic</a>.
<nyt_headline type=" " version="1.0"> Cliché Crunch </nyt_headline>
<nyt_byline type=" " version="1.0"> </nyt_byline>
By <a title="More Articles by William Safire" href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=byll&v1=william%20safire&fdq=19810101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=william%20safire&inline=nyt-per&inline=nyt-per">WILLIAM SAFIRE</a>
<nyt_text> </nyt_text>
<p>“<strong>Don’t believe all the hype</strong> about the ‘<em>credit crunch</em>,’ ” wrote the admirable financial columnist Robert Samuelson last month in Newsweek and The <org value="WPO" idsrc="NYSE">Washington Post</org>. I was glad to read that reassurance from the burning deck while all the rest were fleeing, because such a combination of alliteration and onomatopoeia that produced <em>credit crunch</em> has been enough to raise the ghost of Magnus Arbuthnot. That fictional “cliché expert” of Frank Sullivan’s in the 1930s purged platitudes and banished bromides from our language during the linguistic heyday of The New Yorker magazine: “My motives are ulterior, my circles are vicious, my retainers are faithful. My suspicions are sneaking, my glee is fiendish. . . .”</p>
<p>And today our credit is crunching. The familiar <em>squeeze</em> would not do — too mild — and <em>crisis</em>, cousin to <em>crisis of confidence</em>, is too severe. <em>Crunch</em> seems just right, combining the sound of an icebreaker plowing through the Arctic wastes with the happy sound of breakfast cereal snapping, crackling and popping in the mouth. </p>
<p>First, credit
<person value="arts,automobiles,books,business,college,dining,education,fashion,garden,giving,health,jobs,magazine,movies,multimedia,nyregion,obituaries,realestate,science,sports,style,technology,theater,travel,us,washington,weekinreview,world:::More articles about Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/winston_leonard_spencer_churchill/index.html" idsrc="nyt-per">Winston Churchill</person>
, writing in early 1939 as the war clouds gathered (as war clouds invariably do), with the popularization of the word as he warned of “the outcome of the European <em>crunch</em>.” Next, credit the New York Times reporter Tom Mullaney with marrying that word to <em>credit</em> to form an alliterative economic phrase, writing in June 1967 that “the stock market finally found a bottom last week” and reporting that an expected tax increase to reduce the Johnson-era deficit might avoid “a repetition of last year’s <em>credit crunch</em> and contain inflationary pressures.”</p>
<p>And what, Mr. Arbuthnot, does such onomatopoeia cause in the financial system? “It causes the markets to <em>seize up</em>,” the master of cliché would reply. To <em>seize</em> is “to grab hold of forcibly,” from the Old French <em>seisir</em>, “to take possession of”; when used with <em>up</em> as an intransitive verb, it had an early meaning of “to fasten by the wrists in preparation for a flogging,” which may be in the backs of some bearish minds in this winter of Wall Street’s discontented <em>volatility</em>. (From the Latin <em>volare</em>, “to fly,” meaning “flighty” or “swinging widely.”)</p>
<p>Mechanics, however, took over <em>seize up</em>’s meaning, “to fuse with another part to prevent further motion, requiring lubrication or prying apart,” and another sense rose in anatomy to describe the tension and painful locking of muscles. If you embrace the metaphor of the economy as a huge machine requiring the lubrication of credit, you can express it as being in danger of <em>seizing up</em> (in which case you are fully seized <em>of</em> the problem, to use diplomatic jargon).</p>
<p>Which brings us to a word that lexicographers are hustling to put in the next editions of their dictionaries: <em>subprime</em>. In lending, <em>prime</em> — from the Latin <em>primus</em>, “first” — is the least risky, giving the lender a low interest rate; the <em>sub</em>- prefix takes the meaning in the other direction: high return but high risk. (There is as yet no superprime, but give <em>prime</em> time.) It used to be called <em>below-prime</em>, but that sounded too understandable for bankers, and in 1996 <em>subprime</em> revved up in the auto industry. Jane Bryant Quinn sent a message to impecunious car-shopping readers in January of that year in The Washington Post: “Ten years ago, you might have been poison; now you’re merely a ‘<em>subprime</em> borrower.’ ” </p>
<p>And what happened when some bankers got the bright idea of lumping together the leases on autos, the mortgages on homes, the loans on sending kids to college and other illiquid lending into neat investment products? <em>Securitization</em> was its name, which included the stuffing of what are called “securities” — the safe-sounding word for stocks and bonds — with often-insecure, risky loans. </p>
<p>Widespread chin-pulling about all this, despite robust trade, low inflation and high employment, led to a short-lived stock-market <em>correction</em>. This word, chosen over “nosedive,” “plunge,” “falling out of bed” and other alarmist terms, is defined on Wall Street as a 10 percent decline in the Dow Jones industrial average. Although three times out of four such a dip does not precede an economic slump, it always generates fears of <em>recession</em>. The O.E.D. notes that this word was first used in its sense of a temporary setback in prosperity in The Economist magazine’s issue of Nov. 4, 1929: “The material prosperity of the <location style="" location-code="travel:::Go to the United States Travel Guide.:::http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/overview.html" code-source="nyt-geo">United States</location> is too firmly based, in our opinion, for a revival in industrial activity even if we have to face an immediate <em>recession</em> of some magnitude to be long delayed.” (The revival took quite a while.) </p>
<p>Thus, the <em>subprime</em> lending packaged by the process of <em>securitization</em> threatened a <em>credit crunch</em> causing a lot of hype about a <em>seized-up</em> banking system, causing in turn much media murmuring about a possible <em>recession</em>, and the ensuing market <em>volatility</em>. But not to worry — I just wrapped all the risky terms into a single sentence, which one day the language-business cycle will find easier to sell. </p>
<p>As a chastened trader told The Wall Street Journal recently about risky and well-secured investments, in a phrase dear to the clichéd heart of today’s Arbuthnots, “We mustn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.” </p>
<nyt_headline type=" " version="1.0"> Cliché Crunch </nyt_headline>
<nyt_byline type=" " version="1.0"> </nyt_byline>
By <a title="More Articles by William Safire" href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=byll&v1=william%20safire&fdq=19810101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=william%20safire&inline=nyt-per&inline=nyt-per">WILLIAM SAFIRE</a>
<nyt_text> </nyt_text>
<p>“<strong>Don’t believe all the hype</strong> about the ‘<em>credit crunch</em>,’ ” wrote the admirable financial columnist Robert Samuelson last month in Newsweek and The <org value="WPO" idsrc="NYSE">Washington Post</org>. I was glad to read that reassurance from the burning deck while all the rest were fleeing, because such a combination of alliteration and onomatopoeia that produced <em>credit crunch</em> has been enough to raise the ghost of Magnus Arbuthnot. That fictional “cliché expert” of Frank Sullivan’s in the 1930s purged platitudes and banished bromides from our language during the linguistic heyday of The New Yorker magazine: “My motives are ulterior, my circles are vicious, my retainers are faithful. My suspicions are sneaking, my glee is fiendish. . . .”</p>
<p>And today our credit is crunching. The familiar <em>squeeze</em> would not do — too mild — and <em>crisis</em>, cousin to <em>crisis of confidence</em>, is too severe. <em>Crunch</em> seems just right, combining the sound of an icebreaker plowing through the Arctic wastes with the happy sound of breakfast cereal snapping, crackling and popping in the mouth. </p>
<p>First, credit
<person value="arts,automobiles,books,business,college,dining,education,fashion,garden,giving,health,jobs,magazine,movies,multimedia,nyregion,obituaries,realestate,science,sports,style,technology,theater,travel,us,washington,weekinreview,world:::More articles about Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/winston_leonard_spencer_churchill/index.html" idsrc="nyt-per">Winston Churchill</person>
, writing in early 1939 as the war clouds gathered (as war clouds invariably do), with the popularization of the word as he warned of “the outcome of the European <em>crunch</em>.” Next, credit the New York Times reporter Tom Mullaney with marrying that word to <em>credit</em> to form an alliterative economic phrase, writing in June 1967 that “the stock market finally found a bottom last week” and reporting that an expected tax increase to reduce the Johnson-era deficit might avoid “a repetition of last year’s <em>credit crunch</em> and contain inflationary pressures.”</p>
<p>And what, Mr. Arbuthnot, does such onomatopoeia cause in the financial system? “It causes the markets to <em>seize up</em>,” the master of cliché would reply. To <em>seize</em> is “to grab hold of forcibly,” from the Old French <em>seisir</em>, “to take possession of”; when used with <em>up</em> as an intransitive verb, it had an early meaning of “to fasten by the wrists in preparation for a flogging,” which may be in the backs of some bearish minds in this winter of Wall Street’s discontented <em>volatility</em>. (From the Latin <em>volare</em>, “to fly,” meaning “flighty” or “swinging widely.”)</p>
<p>Mechanics, however, took over <em>seize up</em>’s meaning, “to fuse with another part to prevent further motion, requiring lubrication or prying apart,” and another sense rose in anatomy to describe the tension and painful locking of muscles. If you embrace the metaphor of the economy as a huge machine requiring the lubrication of credit, you can express it as being in danger of <em>seizing up</em> (in which case you are fully seized <em>of</em> the problem, to use diplomatic jargon).</p>
<p>Which brings us to a word that lexicographers are hustling to put in the next editions of their dictionaries: <em>subprime</em>. In lending, <em>prime</em> — from the Latin <em>primus</em>, “first” — is the least risky, giving the lender a low interest rate; the <em>sub</em>- prefix takes the meaning in the other direction: high return but high risk. (There is as yet no superprime, but give <em>prime</em> time.) It used to be called <em>below-prime</em>, but that sounded too understandable for bankers, and in 1996 <em>subprime</em> revved up in the auto industry. Jane Bryant Quinn sent a message to impecunious car-shopping readers in January of that year in The Washington Post: “Ten years ago, you might have been poison; now you’re merely a ‘<em>subprime</em> borrower.’ ” </p>
<p>And what happened when some bankers got the bright idea of lumping together the leases on autos, the mortgages on homes, the loans on sending kids to college and other illiquid lending into neat investment products? <em>Securitization</em> was its name, which included the stuffing of what are called “securities” — the safe-sounding word for stocks and bonds — with often-insecure, risky loans. </p>
<p>Widespread chin-pulling about all this, despite robust trade, low inflation and high employment, led to a short-lived stock-market <em>correction</em>. This word, chosen over “nosedive,” “plunge,” “falling out of bed” and other alarmist terms, is defined on Wall Street as a 10 percent decline in the Dow Jones industrial average. Although three times out of four such a dip does not precede an economic slump, it always generates fears of <em>recession</em>. The O.E.D. notes that this word was first used in its sense of a temporary setback in prosperity in The Economist magazine’s issue of Nov. 4, 1929: “The material prosperity of the <location style="" location-code="travel:::Go to the United States Travel Guide.:::http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/overview.html" code-source="nyt-geo">United States</location> is too firmly based, in our opinion, for a revival in industrial activity even if we have to face an immediate <em>recession</em> of some magnitude to be long delayed.” (The revival took quite a while.) </p>
<p>Thus, the <em>subprime</em> lending packaged by the process of <em>securitization</em> threatened a <em>credit crunch</em> causing a lot of hype about a <em>seized-up</em> banking system, causing in turn much media murmuring about a possible <em>recession</em>, and the ensuing market <em>volatility</em>. But not to worry — I just wrapped all the risky terms into a single sentence, which one day the language-business cycle will find easier to sell. </p>
<p>As a chastened trader told The Wall Street Journal recently about risky and well-secured investments, in a phrase dear to the clichéd heart of today’s Arbuthnots, “We mustn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.” </p>
