Hunker Down to Dodge a Bullet During Broad Daylight

 There are certain phrases that should be stricken from the English language, and especially from news writing. Such phrases are over used and misused. They tend to loose meaning and urgency because they are heard so often. The idea of “hunkering down” does not conjure the imagines it should. It is just something that is said when a storm is coming. In actuality, hunker down is a term used when someone needs to take shelter or hide out somewhere for a while. It is actually a position of bending down and resting on one’s haunches. I often think of someone doing this in a corner. However, the recent strike from Sandy brought “hunker down” out of the misued cliché book and into the vernacular of common people and news anchors.

There are many other aggravating phrases that bother me just as much, if not more. I’ve often wondered what broad daylight looked like and why the weather condition is not newsworthy when robbers attack on a cloudy day or when they have the nerve to attack when it is raining. Do storms carry guns? I wonder because I often hear that we dodged a bullet when it comes to weather coverage of tornadoes and blizzards. Speaking of weather, what is a garden-variety rain shower. Is that a light shower like something that would come out of a garden sprinkler? Or is it an amount that will make the vegetables in your garden grow? Is the rain shower like a tomato? Ugh, there are so many I could rant about.

I try to not use clichés in writing or in speaking. I feel like they are lazy and someone who has a better handle on the language will think of a more appropriate term to express a situation.  If someone does not have a better handle on the English language they should try to think of alternate wording and it would help them in the vocabulary department.