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ImageSMART TALK

by Dr. Viva Palaver


WATERS: As staff psychologist at the Center for English as a First Language, I treat the therapists who treat the patients. I hear them rant about patients who say nucular and preventative, but I've never heard them complain about the widespread use of waters. Maybe because it sounds poetic, and it's technically correct, as far as I know.

But why waters? Isn't in the waters of the Mississippi redundant, when in the Mississippi will do? And all those double letters seem redundant enough for anybody.

Covered by flood waters. Why not covered by flood water? How many waters does it take? Better yet, why not simply inundated? After all, the therapists keep saying that simple English is better English.

Cruising the waters of the Pacific. Wait, the Pacific contains more than one water? How do you count them? Why say it that way? Besides, I understand cruising the Pacific perfectly. I know it's made of water, thank you. I even know it's an ocean.

I wonder if it started with Biblical translators in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, who rendered the opening of a Psalm as "By the waters of Babylon." Maybe they had no idea which body of water the psalmist was singing about, so they invented an all-inclusive word.

The only sensible use of waters I can think of is in the phrase territorial waters, because it may well refer to more than one body of water.

But I'm not a linguist. Maybe I'm all wet.

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