Grammar FYI

Here's a shout-out to the Austin American Statesman (or anyone else using the term elaborated on in this post). So in today's article about U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and all his blah blah blah, the word "witch hunt" is used towards the end to describe Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's attempt to bring DeLay to justice for his alleged wrongdoing. Only, you know, "witch hunt" ain't the appropriate word.

Now, I'm not going to go through all the articles written about these charges against DeLay to look for who actually called this a "witch hunt" first, whether it was someone from DeLay's party or a journalist who said it. (I did do a little research and then gave up, finding out that DeLay's spokesman called this a "vendetta" back in September 2005 when charges were first brought up.)

So yeah, my gripe is with calling this a witch hunt, which is pretty much inaccurate. A witch hunt, by definition, is a search for several persons for something (whether it be unpopular views, alleged witchery, or the such). Etymology-wise, well, its first usage was in the literal search for witches way back in the 1600s in good ol' Salem, Mass.; the current usage was popularized during the Joseph McCarthy era in searching for Communists. But all senses of the word imply the search for more than one person: You cannot have a witch hunt for one person. A witch hunt implies that you are looking for more than one person for one thing, whether they be witches or Commies, but not searching for one person for several things, as is the case with DeLay.

I hate to agree with someone who associates with DeLay, but in this case, his spokesman was right in calling this a vendetta, which is defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., as "an often prolonged series of retaliatory, vengeful, or hostile acts or exchange of such acts." The example it even gives is "waged a personal vendetta against those who opposed his nomination."

In summation: vendetta = right; witch hunt = wrong. This has been a public service announcement from the League of Trying to Make Journalists Not Sound Like Idiots*.

*Not a real organization. Heh.