I just heard some Democrat use that irritating phrase, for the umptillionth time. Whenever I hear it, the physicist in me wonders how a tax cut can be "massive." It seems to me to be primarily a rhetorical trick. In fact, I suspect that most Dems think that any tax cut, of whatever size, is "massive," regardless of the units...

And while I'm on the subject of irrational political rhetoric, I'm still bothered by Al Gore's idiotic and repetitious use of the phrase "blow a hole in the deficit" in the 1996 campaign. How do you blow a hole in a hole?

One of my "old stick in the mud" peeves. "Massive" is "the quality of having mass". Sheesh, everything as large as or larger than an atom has mass - how is calling something "massive" conveying anything interesting? If someone means to say "large" or "extensive" or some other indication of size or quantity, why must he/she expose his/her lack of familiarity with a thesaurus by misusing "massive"?

From: www.bartelby.com Roget's II:

large
 
ADJECTIVE: 1. Notably above average in amount, size, or scope: big, considerable, extensive, good, great, healthy, large-scale, sizable. Informal : tidy. See BIG.
2. Covering a wide scope: all-around, all-inclusive, all-round, broad, broad-spectrum, comprehensive, expansive, extended, extensive, far-ranging, far-reaching, general, global, inclusive, overall, sweeping, wide-ranging, wide-reaching, widespread.
3. Having great significance: big, consequential, considerable, historic, important, material, meaningful, monumental, significant, substantial. See IMPORTANT.

massive
 
ADJECTIVE: 1. Extremely large; having great mass: bulky, oversize, oversized. See BIG.
2. Of extraordinary size and power: behemoth, Brobdingnagian, Bunyanesque, colossal, cyclopean, elephantine, enormous, gargantuan, giant, gigantesque, gigantic, herculean, heroic, huge, immense, jumbo, mammoth, massy, mastodonic, mighty, monster, monstrous, monumental, mountainous, prodigious, pythonic, stupendous, titanic, tremendous, vast. Informal : walloping. Slang : whopping. See BIG.
3. Having a relatively great weight: heavy, heavyweight, hefty, ponderous, weighty. See HEAVY.

Words are tools - I wish more writers would discover more than the equivalents to a hammer, a saw, and a screwdriver.

Words are tools - I wish more writers would discover more than the equivalents to a hammer, a saw, and a screwdriver.

We're talking about sound bites. Only the hammer is effective here.

Perhaps we can get Chris Matthews, fresh from his unusually able filleting of Dennis Kucinich, to pose this question to his next highly placed Democrat interviewee:

"Mr. Person of Stature Among Democrats, just how large does a tax cut need to be to be called 'massive'? Would an equally large tax increase also qualify for the term?"