"My words mean just what I choose them to mean. Neither more nor less." -- Humpty Dumpty
Words have power, but excess use weakens that power.
Some terms sound catchy, but are inherently meaningless.
Example 1: Iconic. This is a fine word, derived from "icon," an image, used extensively in churches to describe an especially important image. But overuse diminishes its strength. If anything and everything that becomes in any way popular is called an icon, then an icon is no longer something special.
Example 2: Dog whistle. It seems to be a metaphor for something, but for all the times I've heard it used in recent weeks by the talk show punditocracy, I have no idea what it means. On the face of it, a dog whistle is something high-pitched and shrill, used to attract a canine. How that translates to people behavior remains a question. Unless that behavior is high pitched and shrill, but that context has never been clear.
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