Seasoned Citizen, Not to Mention Salty

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. A few weeks ago, we had a conversation with Mary that you’ll probably remember. She’s 82, and she likes to refer to herself as being middle old. And we talked about how people feel about other words for reaching that age, like being elderly or being a senior citizen. And we wondered whether there were better alternatives to those words.

And you know what, Grant? The very next day, I walked into a store here in San Diego, and there was a cheery young woman behind the counter. And she was telling somebody about their wisdom discount. And I thought, what? And yeah, she looked at the person’s driver’s license and said, oh, you’re over 60, you get a wisdom discount. And so I made a point of asking, is that really what it’s called? Is that your nomenclature? And she said, absolutely. We love our older customers.

Wisdom discount. But that reminds me of a proverb that I once read, which is, just because you’ve reached an old age doesn’t mean you’ve learned anything along the way. But it got me wondering whether the language we use around age will do some changing if it’s good for business.

We got an email from Adam Kellogg, who wrote to say that in Portland, Oregon, the local transit agency now uses the term honored citizen. But it’s not only for people 65 and older. It’s for people who are low income or Medicare beneficiaries or riders with a mental or physical disability. Honored citizens in Portland get a discount.

Yeah, I like that terminology. I like it as an umbrella term. And it also shortens their need to use the fully elaborated phrase of, you know, older people, blah, blah, blah, at people with disabilities and so forth.

Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, it’s a little self-conscious, but I like it. And Michael Gardner wrote from Albuquerque, New Mexico to share his mother’s term for this, and that’s seasoned citizen. He says—seasoned. Seasoned citizen, which I also like very much.

Her reasoning is that when someone reaches a certain age, she’s 84, they’ve been seasoned with the ingredients of life and are ready to be served. But I also like seasoned suggesting what you were saying about having experience, accumulated life experience.

Yeah, that’s true. But seasoning can happen at a young age as well. But yeah, but in general, the older you are, the more seasoned you are, right? You’ve been around the sun a few times and made your mistakes in bulk. Yes, yes. You have some mileage on you.

But I’m just wondering if in general, sort of like, I’ve thought for quite a while that as boomers move into old age, we’re going to see more and more things like stylish hearing aids or high-tech walking canes. And I just, I wonder if that kind of thing is going to happen with language as well.

It could be. Certainly as the technology gets better for all devices, we get lighter materials and smaller electronics. And the naming that goes with those, maybe the naming companies will come up with generics that will then later be passed on to these generations. You know, like we had for a while, the internet generation, maybe something will happen in that direction.

Yeah. And as long as it’s useful, I would think it would take hold. So we’ll see. We’ll see. We’re still welcoming your contributions toward naming the older generations. What’s a good overall term that doesn’t sound pejorative for folks of a later generation? Let us know, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.