I've had a pretty frustrating time trying to get this one important bit of my blogging intfrastructure back up and running. So I'm giving up for the day, and instead treating you to a mini-tirade about something that bugs me. And that thing is:
"meteoric rise"
It's a very common phrase. As I type, a Googling for news stories yields the headlines:
Bitcoin's Meteoric Rise Shakes Up the Financial World (Onesafe, 3 hours ago)
Nvidia’s Meteoric Rise Has Made Jensen Huang Almost as Rich as Warren Buffett (Investopedia, 2 days ago)
The meteoric rise of David Corenswet, the actor who gave up his quiet life to become Superman (EL PAÍS, 4 days ago)
Lamine Yamal's 18th birthday: Barcelona, Spain star's meteoric rise in 18 key moments (ESPN, 2 days ago)
Kaleb Wing’s meteoric rise on mound has him as one of the country’s top MLB Draft prospects (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 2 days ago)
That's just the first five in the Google feed. It's an epidemic, I tells ya!
The problem that has probably already occurred to you: meteors do not rise! They fall. And very quickly!
And it's not as if people don't notice. Actual astronomer Phil Plait griped about this a long time ago on his Bad Astronomy blog.
I was reading a major metropolitan newspaper the other day, and it referred to a Russian official's "meteoric rise" in the political structure of that country. Of course, the reporter meant that the the official appeared out of nowhere and has made a quick, brilliant rise to the top of his heap. The real meaning of the phrase, however, is just the opposite: were we to be literal, the official would have made a sudden eye-catching appearance in the political arena and then quickly burned himself out. He may have left a trail behind him, and even made quite an impact in the end!
A little Googling on that comes up with a candidate for what Phil read: a WaPo story from June, 1996, headlined LEBED'S METEORIC ASCENT. (WaPo gifted link).
"Ascent", not "rise". Not that that's any better. But later on, the reporter is unafraid to go back to the tried and true:
As a story of a meteoric rise to power, Lebed's may be the most unlikely since an eccentric village priest named Rasputin was elevated to the court of Czar Nicholas II early this century and gained tremendous influence.
Twenty-nine years!
Editors, get out whatever your modern red-pencil equivalent is, and stop your reporters from using this silly phrase!
(And, not that it matters: "Lebed" in the WaPo story is Alexander Lebed, who lived until 2002, when his helicopter encountered electric lines in the fog. Wikipedia says that at least one person mentioned sabotage as a possibility. Putin was the Russian president at the time.)