Wikipedia is far from infallible but most of the time it is pretty well spot on.
One of its entries reads: “A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of art such as sculptures, statues or fountains and parks.”
Nowhere in Wikipedia’s entry is a memorial described as an event.
But it happens everywhere, on TV, radio and in the press.
The other day ABC breakfast TV host Michael Rowland used the words “memorial” and “memorial serviced” consecutively in the space of a few seconds.
The Australian’s media writer Nick Tabakoff did it in consecutive paragraphs two weeks back, although to be fair to him it could be the fault of a sub-editor, whose collective expertise continues on the downward slope.
Memorial seems to have become the widely accepted term when describing a memorial service.
Why? Is it laziness?
Maybe it is done because everyone else is doing and like sheep they follow the mob.
TV and radio folk never use one word where 10 do will do because every additional word they utter helps to fill their allotted airtime.
The erroneous use of memorial goes against that long-winded trend, maybe because it has become overly trendy and let’s face it many people feel that it’s trendy to be, like sheep, part of the mob.
Nowhere that I saw on TV did any graphic refer to Shane Warne’s recent event use the word service, it was always memorial on its own.
Think about it, “memorial service” is two words.
The first word is an adjective that is used to describe the second word, which is a noun.
So why is it shortened to use only the adjective?
It’s just plain wrong but since when does that matter today?
Another bugbear of mine is the use of “less” when “fewer” is correct.
The most common place where that is seen is in supermarkets, where the low-number-of-items checkout queue is labelled “less than 12 items”.
Fewer is the correct word in that case but it I’ve never seen it used in that context.
Aiming at the lowest-intelligence group in words that they cannot fail to understand is totally understandable but that doesn’t make it correct.
It’s too late for lovers of our language to take a stand.
That time has long gone, which is a great pity.
Grumpy old woman (name and address withheld).
