I'm starting a new end-of-year tradition here: choosing a word of the year. Merriam-Webster has already done it, I know, picking the word "surreal." But their decision is based on online searches, and there are words used frequently, addictively, pointlessly, infuriatingly, that nobody needs to look up.
Like "so." A few years ago my friend Greg pointed out to me how people being interviewed often began their answers with "So." I hadn't noticed it but, alerted to the trend, I began to hear it again and again. It is, as Greg pointed out, annoying not just as a verbal tick - like "like" - but as a note of condescension. Even though interviewees use it merely as a launching pad, it comes across sounding as if they're talking to a child, or someone who hasn't been paying attention. "So" reads as "Let me explain it to you again so maybe this time you'll understand." Even when it prefaces a statement as straightforward as "I was living in LA at the time."
And it's become ubiquitous, even among the otherwise articulate: lawyers, politicians, scientists, writers. Americans from all walks of life it seems - with the exception of athletes - now answer questions with "So." It's absurd, but not surreal.
