Two Things I Learned This Week

1. The term "socialized medicine" was invented in 1947 by the American Medical Association's public-relations agency.

From the transcript of a "Fresh Air" interview with T.R. Reid, author of the new book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care:

Harry Truman wanted to provide universal health care in 1947.  The American Medical Association -- the doctors -- hired a PR firm that invented the term "socialized medicine."  Nobody knew what it meant.  But I think the idea was that if you wanted to provide health care to your sick neighbor, you were a commie!  During the Cold War that was a powerful argument!  The amazing thing is that it's still a powerful argument.

2. I've been using "self-deprecating" to mean "disparaging of oneself and one's abilities" for ... well, forever.

But Garner's Modern American Usage, Third Edition, has set me straight. Deprecate, says Garner, means "to disapprove earnestly." The correct word is self-depreciating. Garner writes:

Depreciate, transitively, means "to belittle, disparage"; and intransitively, "to fall in value" (used in reference to assets or investments). The phrase self-deprecating is, literally speaking, a virtual impossibility, except perhaps for those suffering from extreme neuroses. ... Unfortunately, the form self-deprecating—despite its mistaken origins—is now 50 times as common in print as self-depreciating. Speakers of AmE routinely use self-deprecating. However grudgingly, we must accord to it the status of Standard English.

Comments

[adchick]

The term self-deprecating is used so often, I'll have to explain myself every time I use the correct version! Thank You! I am smarter because of you!

[Duchesse]

Thanks, I didn't know that and even my super-picky parents didn't either!

[mike]

@adchick, I think that if Garner (The Sensible Prescriptivist(tm), you read it here first) says "self-deprecating" is Standard English, then it's Standard English, and using "self-depreciating" and having to explain it every time you do is ... why would you do that?

@Nancy, I'm sure you've seen references to a now-popular YouTube video of Reagan depreciating "socialized medicine" in 1961. What's amusing to me about this is that he did this in the employ of the AMA -- dude was an actor, after all -- but it's gone viral as if Saint Ron had writ the words himself: "Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine!" Anyway, that T. R. Reid interview was awesome.

[PW]

Actually, you were right the first time. Who's this Garner dude? OED, Oxford, and whatever American dics I have around the house give deprecating the same meaning you (we) have always given it.

[Nancy Friedman]

@PW: Bryan Garner is the respected editor of the foremost U.S. guide to English usage--a "bible" of sorts for editors, publishers, and writers. Usage guides are very different from dictionaries; where dictionaries compile and report the way language is used, rightly or wrongly, usage guides advise on correctness. Dictionaries describe; usage guides prescribe.

One of the nifty things about Garner is his numerical Language Change Index: if a term is at Stage 1 ("dependency" misused for "dependence"), it's rejected. If it's at Stage 5--as in the case of "self-deprecating"--it's accepted. But I recommend reading the full entry to understand how the acceptance came about. And I definitely recommend that every serious writer and editor in the U.S. own a current edition of Garner along with other standard references: Chicago Manual of Style, American Heritage Dictionary, etc.