It is probably not accurate to say I learned a new trick, because I’m sure I’ve always done it. But recently I was talking about magazines with someone and I wanted to express how perfectly they capture the moment in which they were published, in a way that things like newspapers don’t do very well, and I paused and said, “I guess they really capture the zeitgeist, if you want to be the type of person who uses that word.”

This does nothing to prevent the impression that I am a self-conscious linguaphile with heavy affectations in everything that I do, but it does make it seem like at least I’m not the sort of person who uses the word zeitgeist! It’s a great trick. Like scare quotes, it distances you from the word, but it goes further than that. It says “you and I both know what this word means and I, at least, dislike its connotations, but nevertheless, there it is.” It is another self-conscious affectation that people can politely laugh at, or maybe even sincerely laugh at. For all I know other people hear certain words and phrases and sit there thinking “he just used ‘zeitgeist’ unironically–to think I liked that guy!”

In which case I may just be hilarious.