Parse This

   Today's challenge: Diagram a Trump sentence.  (Suggested by Dan Balz of the Washington Post to Chuck Todd of MSNBC.)

  Buzzword of the Week: Existential, as in "existential threat." That phrase has cropped up daily for some time now, reaching all the way to the White House, when President Barack Obama used it several times during a talk.
   Chief copy editor Pug Mahoney wondered how an "existential threat" differs from any other threat, so we checked various dictionary definitions. The word "existential" is defined as "of or pertaining to existence." Which really tells us nothing, as is often the case with dictionaries, since they define words in terms of themselves. In any case, an "existential threat" is little more than a "real threat," as opposed to an unreal or nonexistent threat. Maybe politicians use "existential" because such a threat sounds so much more serious, even though it's no less real.
   The question then becomes whether a threat is more real, more serious, has more potential to cause more damage, or any of various other permutations of threatendom.
   In addition, is the threat a danger to someone's very existence, and not just a warning to beware of an icy sidewalk?
   If that's the case, say so. Give the public something to go on, rather than rely on a word that has been used so often it becomes a buzzword, where overuse erodes whatever value the word might have had originally.