Reader’s horror 241210

Yesterday I read the word jell in the New York Times. If most errors I highlight represent analogs of fingernails on blackboards, this one joins a select group which seems more like needles in my eye or somesuch. Why? Because…

Once there existed the word gelatin/gelatine. In the very early 1700’s French people contrived the word (gélatine) from the Latin gelare meaning “to freeze, congeal” and has roots in the concept of coldness and freezing. Gelatin (my preferred spelling) became shortened to gel to make a verb meaning “to become a gelatin” and around the 1950’s took on a figurative meaning, “to come together and agree well.” Diverse opinions would get discussed and a consensus would gel around a course of action. It branched out to other shades of this meaning.

Once there existed the word jelly. We know what that is; we like to eat it on toasted bread products. Substances would jell to become jelly. By the beginning of the 1900’s a figurative meaning evolved, meaning “to solidify” referring to an idea or project ‘firming up’. A film in the works for years would start to jell around a specific path forward and a casting call would go out.

Though extremely subtle (and frankly, extremely subjective), gel means diverse things coming together and firming up. But jell means the innate properties of a something which should come together and firm up, do so. Not exactly the same.

Obviously both gel and jell look like twin brothers of different mothers, but by my childhood and young adulthood in the 60’s and 70’s the use of jell seemingly had disappeared. That’s a personal observance; maybe it remained widely used, just not in one blessed thing I read. During that time a common product, Jell-O, began whipping the commercial airwaves with every star personality it could find (even if some turned out later to have been sexual predators). And guess what? I began to see jell used where gel had been used before.

I suspect, have suspected, and will continue to suspect the re-introduction of jell doesn’t represent an informed decision to use a word with connotations of sweetness, and doesn’t get limited to projects or ideas firming up. It represents a giant wave in the ocean of writing which has rolled through the ranks of writers too damn ignorant or lazy to realize they’ve co-opted a contrived version of a contrived brand name which comes from gel. And the entire concept of gelatin itself was contrived when the product was invented.

I’m not going to rate this one because “nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong,” and I hate admitting I’m wrong. Hmmph.