Getting tired of hearing that B-word so often? Well, a Sunday Times piece shows that the phrase "real estate bubble" is so mainstream, so not-jargon-anymore, that it's unhip now, and therefore prime for meta-analysis. The writers say those who stand to make money off it have already won "by muddying the linguistic waters." Just listen to word guru Grant Barrett standing atop his slippery slope:
It's that weird behavior of trying to make a word mean what you want it to mean ... We call it the thesaurus defense: it's basically redefining a word in order to suit their own point of view and in order to make themselves feel right or sound right.To stem this depraved relativism, we here at Curbed support the footnoting* of all future appearances of said "bubble" to prevent confusion.
· Slippery Devil, That Real Estate 'Bubble' [NYT]
*Not really.