Since pushback (or is it push back?) has started to replace resistance in nearly every conversation in the business world in this country, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to step in and single-handedly prevent yet another non-word from entering our vocabulary—kind of like a grammar superhero. Alas, I may have been a little too late since pushback now appears on dictionary.com.
For many people, when something appears in a dictionary (any dictionary), it automatically qualifies as a word. That is understandable; while Ms. Coven and I have discussed on a couple of occasions that we believe that it takes more than comman usage (which is often common misusage) in order for something to become a word, it is not well understood–or agreed upon. I will expand on that topic soon.
Pushback, though, is a classic example. It was not in the 1984 edition of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, but it’s in the ultra-modern dictionary.com. The reason is clear: pushback is now used, but, apparently, it wasn’t even a sparkle in the eyes of even the trendiest of speakers in 1984.
We now say The client is giving us pushback about the price rather than The client is giving us resistance about the price or even The client thinks the price we gave them was too high because it’s the trendy thing to say.
It’s just not the best way to communicate since many of us don’t consider pushback to be a word.
–Paul
Paul’s book–Literally, the Best Language Book Ever
