Your Honor, I object!

It’s unfair to pick on the uneducated or those who struggle to learn English. But pretenders and pseudo-academics are fair game. A native English-speaking college graduate with a doctorate and a professional title should display a reasonable use of the language. Particularly if that profession requires skillful, sometimes manipulative, use of English … sprinkled with Latin.

Yesterday in a television interview, a prosecuting attorney said (describing a pastor accused of murder):

This man presented himself to the community as a paradigm of virtuosity.

Where do I begin? One of these would be called a malapropism (a speech error in which a word is nonsensical in context, but similar in sound to the correct word). But two of them in the same sentence! That’s difficult to do, even if you’re trying.

Let the court transcript show, the correct idiom is :

paragon of virtue

It means a perfect example (paragon) of purity, goodness, or high moral standards (virtue).

Paradigm, a trendy, overused business buzzword, is just a pattern or example. New paradigm often refers to a different business model or way of doing things.

And virtuosity means great artistic skill, particularly in music. Jimi Hendrix displayed virtuosity on the electric guitar. Clearly, virtue was not a requirement.

So with this malapropism, the attorney literally accused the pastor of presenting himself to the community as a new way to play a musical instrument. Hardly a crime. But she emphasized that, since he had lied, everything he said was questionable. It follows that, since she spoke nonsense, everything else she said was also questionable.

Errors like these occur when we try to add syllables and make ourselves sound important, assuming the audience won’t know the difference. Or when we don’t know the difference ourselves.

Ergo, the Prosecutor ipso facto displays sufficient mens rea in the actus reus. This posturing, double whammy of grammatical absurdity must be some kind of felony. Don’t you hate it when people do that?

Perhaps the defense attorney should have instructed the defendant to stare menacingly at the prosecutor, and to wear one of those T-shirts that says “I am silently correcting your grammar.”

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