Opinion | Columnists
‘Smarts’ in abundance, but wisdom in short supply
‘Smart’ in all its forms has been all over the lot since 1700
- By Ruth Walker, Christian Science Monitor
- Published: 20:00 November 3, 2012
As I was discussing logistics with
relatives en route to Boston for a visit, the question arose as to how
we would all get around together on the “T,” as the mass transit system
here is known.
Queuing up to buy individual
tickets would chew up precious time. It occurred to me that I could just
charge up my Charlie Card, part of what the Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority calls its “reusable and rechargeable ticketing
system,” and have us all ride on that. “We can all travel on my smart
card.”
Smart has come into its own
to describe gizmos that have orders-of-magnitude greater functionality
than their not-so-smart predecessors.
The Online Etymology
Dictionary explains that the use of “smart” to refer to devices
“behaving as though guided by intelligence” dates to 1972. There were
“smart bombs” long before smartphones — back when phones were bolted to
the wall in your house, but owned by the phone company.
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Here’s the scoop on smart: As
an adjective, it goes back to a late Old English word, smeart, which
meant “sharp, severe, stinging,” according to the Online Etymology
Dictionary. Baby boomers may remember that whenever Snagglepuss,
Hanna-Barbera’s pink cartoon tiger, would take a whack from one of his
adversaries, his characteristic response was “That smarts!”
By 1300, “smart”, as an
adjective, had come to mean “quick, active, or clever.” This probably
comes from the notion of “cutting” wit, words, etc., the etymology
dictionary speculates. By the early 1700s, “smart” meant “fashionably
dressed”.
“Smart” in
all its forms has been all over the lot ever since. As an adjective, it
is perhaps the most common word used to describe someone as
“intelligent”. But “smart” retains a colloquial tone (“He’s a smart guy;
he’ll figure it out”) that makes it out of place in some contexts.
“Smart” also has an overtone of self-interest (“smart lawyers”), and
even disrespect: “smart attitude”.
The Macmillan Dictionary
notes: “A smart movement is quick and full of energy,” as in “a smart
rap across the knuckles,” or “moving the ball smartly down the field”.
The adverbial “smartly” has
generally lined up with these concepts of “smartness,” to the point
where I, as an editor, would challenge its use as a synonym for
“intelligently”.
However, I can feel the
lexical ground shifting. During his second debate with Mitt Romney,
President Barack Obama said: “[I]f we’re going to go after folks who are
here illegally, we should do it smartly and go after folks who are
criminals ...”
And here’s the headline on a New York Times essay on science policy: “With limited budgets, pursuing science smartly”.
The “traditional” sense of
“smartly” is still alive and well on Google News: “Kentucky Lottery
sales jump smartly in July and August,” for instance.
But so are other senses of
the word, perhaps influenced by the technological “smart,” as when
Venture Beat reported, “Kliq shares your content smartly across all your
social networks”.
A headline reading: “West
Michigan business leaders smartly veer from Right to Work priority”
confused me. Did “smartly” refer to the speed of the veering? Or express
the writer’s approval of the move?
It’s the latter, I concluded
after reading the piece. And the adverb I would have suggested is
wisely. We have “smarts,” and even intelligence, in abundance. But
wisdom is always in short supply.
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