pyrrhic victory

Eli was anal-lingusing the Minotaur at the same time, I believe. :-*

Dang, I just grossed myself out. :-X That doesn't happen too often.

 

Since, I missed it or am not in the loop.
Can someone fill me/us in? Where is he?

 

He was hoisted on his own petard.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I know I worry about these things too much but why is it okay to use "Lilliputian" but not "Brobdingnagian"? Of course Yahoo is just another word now while any reference to Houyhnhnm, well, people think it sounds like Mr Ed clearing his throat.

YHS, etc

 

Because the Gulliver's Travels cartoon popular on The Banana Splits Saturday morning television show in the US of A only had the Lilliputians featured.

 

We're not disagreeing....I think you have to look at case-by-case instances. It's not a matter of readers being 'smart' enough, it's a question of whether the reference gets in the way of the writing....whether it pulls the attention to the reference instead to the overall story. And I'd feel the same about making a reference to La Boheme as I would feel about a reference to LL Cool J...if I think a significant number of readers might miss my meaning, I'm not going there. Doesn't mean they're dumb, doesn't mean I'm smart.

ps, everyone knows Kobe beef, your guy needs to get out more.

 

I think using "pyrrhic victory" in a lede would be a journalistic triumph, but would come at the cost of losing readers.

 

Would a Pyrrhic victory be saying "I'd hit it,'' and then discovering that "it" is Rosie O'Donnell?

 

Iraq could prove to be a pyrric victory

 

I'd have taken Kobe beef out on the principle of it being a lame pun in a Kobe Bryant story. Anyhoo, I think it's a horses-for-courses thing; columns or analyses can have some words that gamers just shouldn't. And I would never put a word like "ebullient" in a hedline. Heds have to have short, impactful, understandable words. In a story in which the reader has been hooked into, they may go to the dictionary. They won't do that for a hed.

 

I think there are quite a few factors. I think you do have to know your audience. I wouldn't use the old rules of thumb about sixth- or eighth- grade reading level or whatever. In the coming years, newspapers are more often going to be read by the elite (if at all) and less by the average person. There are no more factory workers - with high school diplomas - picking up the evening paper on the way home. There are hardly any more factory workers or evening papers. The kind of people who want to read a newspaper nowadays are mostly people who have some level of high education.
Also, more and more people are going to college now. The education level has risen a little. Hell, my parents didn't go to college in the '70s, but everyone I know around my age has gone.
I used to work for a paper in an affluent suburb where I'm sure 99.9999999999 percent of the people in town had a bachelor's degree if not more. I think they would have understood Pyrrhic victory. One of the paper's I freelance for now is in a less affluent area where the education is a little lower. I probably wouldn't do the same things I did at my former paper. Plus, I get paid the same whether I use the big words or not.
I think to dismiss the use of a term or phrase is myopic at best and at worst, part of the problem with some people at newspapers (that they're far too stodgy and ultimately keeping the industry from achieving whatever potential it has by failing to see new ideas and new ways of doing things.)
There's a difference between inserting a phrase or term in the flow of the story than forcing something in because you want to put it in. I believe if you're going to do it, it has to be a small touch to the story. I think Pyrrhic victory can work if the team wins and two star players get hurt. It saves space and it gives a two-word overview of what happened, which you can explain in more detail later.
I think a lot of people would say using Pyrrhic victory is just "showing off" by the writer. What exactly is wrong with that? As long as it doesn't hinder communication with the reader too much and it isn't too abstruse, what's wrong with trying to impress a reader? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing - trying to grab their attention?
The problem with some newspaper stories is they are far too milquetoast and pallid to grab attention AND that's why people put those stories down, not because they come across an 10th or 11th grade word. Readers who do that were probably not committed to reading the story in the first place.
What's wrong with not being boring? People clung to the inverted pyramid for years before somebody tried something different. It was about time. The inverted pyramid dates back to the Civil War and the telegraph! Yet, people still use it. (My take: great teaching tool and perhaps decent for straight news. Horrible in most other instances. Every paragraph is more useless than the next ... why keep reading?)
That's why the best stories often don't appear in newspapers and instead in magazine and now the web. Some of them don't have draconian copy desks who enforce rules that are sometimes antiquated.

 

I've got no objection to the phrase from an intellectual standpoint. I checked, by the way, and it turned up 274 Nexis hits from U.S. newspapers & wires in the past year.

Considering that, however, does it not qualify as cliche?