Perfect! As a Constant Response to Things That Aren’t Really Perfect

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tony from Fort Worth.

Hi, Tony in Fort Worth. How are you doing?

Doing well. I went to a restaurant the other day and I noticed when I made my order, the server responded with perfect instead of okay or I got it or something like that.

So it sounds like the definition of the word perfect is changing. Talk us through this. So you’re in a restaurant, you place an order, and the person that you’re talking to says perfect back at you.

That’s right, because I’m pretty confident that my order of chicken fajitas isn’t the perfect order.

Tony, I want to tell you a little story. When I go to my doctor’s office, every single time, everybody there says perfect at least once. The receptionist says perfect. The lab tech says perfect. The nurse says perfect. You know, I give them my name, and they say perfect. And, you know, they take my blood pressure. Perfect. And they say perfect so much that the last time I went to the doctor, I counted up 14 perfects.

Now, Grant and I were giving a talk at a conference in Oregon. And I started talking about this again and going on and on about how I’m hearing perfect so often. And it’s really bothering me. And he pointed out to me that on this show, we always talk about not complaining about other people’s language. And he pointed out that I was complaining about other people’s language. I was being imperfect.

So I had, yes.

That was my exact reaction. My original reaction after the first four or five times I heard that was to be annoyed. And I thought, Martha and Grant said, don’t be annoyed, be curious. So that’s why I called her.

But Martha, you’re at the hospital, you’re at the doctor’s office, and they tell you you’re perfect, and you’re annoyed by that? Come on, you’re perfect.

Well, my name is perfect. My social security number is perfect. Your blood pressure is perfect. Your height is perfect. Your age is perfect. You’re perfect. The day for my next appointment is perfect. Tony is perfect. Listen to him. He sounds perfect.

He is. There’s something else happening here, though, Martha, isn’t there? I mean, once we get past our initial, like, oh, wait a second, this is happening too often, that initial, like, wait a second, I’m sensing a trend here, we know as linguists that something else is going on.

Well, sure. I mean, perfect doesn’t necessarily mean in those contexts the kind of definition that you’ll see in the dictionary, like characterized by supreme moral or spiritual excellence. That’s you all over. Or righteous or holy or immaculate. That’s those fajitas all over. But yeah, I mean, it serves a function. It’s a semantic element that serves a function, right, Grant?

That’s right. What’s happening here isn’t a factual exchange. It’s an emotional and social exchange. What we take away from it is a feeling and a sense that two people did what society requires them to do, not that we traded information.

And, you know, Tony, what’s also interesting is that I’ve talked to people at my doctor’s office about that. I’ve said, do you realize there’s a virus going around this office? And I’m certain that they often do not know that they’re using it. They say, what? I say perfect. Yeah, you’ve said it five times. And so I think people aren’t even aware that they’re saying it. And I know I’ve started picking it up. And I’ve also noticed that when people reply to me in email with perfect, it doesn’t bother me as much. So, I mean, I think as Grant said, it’s an element of communication and doesn’t necessarily mean you just can’t take the word too seriously. You’re right, Tony. Don’t get furious. Get curious.

Yeah, yeah. So if we here’s the fieldwork for you, Tony, and for everyone else, if we examine all the times in our lives that people say something automatic that on the surface sounds odd in these commercial exchanges, we’ll find that nearly all of the time that they don’t really mean to convey factual information.

Yeah, along the lines of how are you?

Yeah, exactly. You probably don’t want the whole story, right? But humans, as social animals, have these rituals of exchange. And what they’re doing is doing what society requires is participating in these rituals of exchange. There does not need to be information passed in those rituals. There does not need to be. And perfect is not being transmitted. The idea that anything was perfect is not being transmitted. All that’s being transmitted is the concept that something was acceptable. That’s it. That’s the only information that’s being passed there. That was acceptable to me, sir. Thank you for your order of fajitas.

All right. So I don’t have to embellish the word perfect when I actually mean perfect.

Well, there is reports of this happening in the U.K. as well. So it’s not only in the United States. But in the United States, we do have a hyperbolic culture where we reach higher and higher for more extreme forms of adjectives and adverbs and exaggeration and overstatement. So I suspect that beyond perfect, we’re going to go for something even more exaggerated soon. It’s going to be, I don’t know what it’ll be, but something beyond perfect. We’ll see.

So, Tony, this has been an awesome call. That has been super luminary, Tony. The pleasure I’m sure is all mine.

Yes, sir. Thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. We’d be perfectly delighted for you to give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.