Why is “flap,” as a noun used to describe fuss or controversy, trite?
Because it trips off the typewriters of too many writers, too much of the time. The current volume contains a large entry under the word “irony.” The older editions had no entry at all. Why, after 23 years, did you decide Times writers needed the lengthy discussion of irony? We find people using “ironic” and “irony” very loosely too much of the time. In our daily critiques of the paper, we find ourselves telling people, “That’s not an irony, it’s just a coincidence.” Irony doesn’t mean, “Hey, isn’t that interesting or strange!” So we put it in the book. Why is “Valium” (absent from the previous volume) included in the new manual, but not “Prozac”? Prozac probably should have been included. In fact it is very hard with well-known drugs to remember whether the name is a trademark or generic. It has nothing to do with the frequency with which Valium, or for that matter Prozac, is used within the general population. It has to do with how often people come up against it and wonder whether i
