What’s in a word?

Plenty. On the other hand, sometimes some people make overly much of one.

Take the case of "addict," which a congressman questioned the appropriation of, as a tagline in an advertising campaign promoting cell phones and their sundry new services.

Did he succeed in having the word expunged, upon pain of a cease-and-desist order against the ad campaign? Given the promo blitz’s continuing exposure in tri-media, we can surmise that the word-wary legislator, who followed up on his knee-jerk sense of umbrage with deafening silence, may have, indeed. Succeeded, that, is, but perhaps only in acquiring phones and services for kin, drivers and bodyguards. In exchange for the abrupt retreat.

Is "addict" a bad word to use to promote a commercial product and/or service? Only the busybody sensitifs and terminally moralistic among us would agree with Mr. Congressman. Most everyone else would say, hey, lighten up. Only a word; surely it can’t get our moral fiber as a nation all frayed up.

Besides, the way all sorts of probes and drug tests are being conducted in our rabidly investigative country, the word "addict" or "adik" may soon be used by street kids to point out anyone who touches a basketball.

Do I hear ouch or aray from the movers and shakers of our pro league? Well, these honchos may only be said to have brought it upon themselves for imposing such rigid rules governing even a player’s choice of substance to abuse. If you think I’m being libertine-ish on this as usual, then riddle me this: You think the retro players from Crispa and Toyota (who tangled last Friday) should’ve been subjected to random or mandatory testing before that single exhibition game? You say yes, and I would’ve wondered out loud how many would have been left for each team. Oh, okay, a case may be made for not all habits dying hard.

Them were the days, anyway, when a player with grace and skill and a habitual bead at the basket could still display all those merits for everyone to see, even when he was "high" on something or other. I must take issue with a sportswriter who claims he wouldn’t be caught dead in the hardcourt playing against someone inclined to substance abuse, lest he suffer at the hands of irrational behavior. Again, come on, lighten up.

What’s in a word? "Use" versus "abuse" – aye, there’s the rub provided by a couple of additional letters. A word can assume hysterical proportions depending on how it’s used or abused.

What’s in a word? What’s with the word "addict"? Computer addicts in their very own homes most parents now happen to have. Television addicts, game show addicts, soap opera addicts —- the world is full of them. And a lot of us even display irrational behavior in following up on everything Kris Aquino says and does.

With regards the potency of words, what we here in our neck of the linguistic woods are privileged with is multi-level, multi-sensory appreciation, what with our common facility with two or more languages. Go south and it’s a virtual multiplicity of tongues, wagging not confusion but layered enjoyment.

Sometime ago, a visitor to Siquijor (whom an academic friend likes to pun into "Seek-a-Whore") would likely be led to check in on a supernatural spectacle, a modest one to be sure. Prime draw in the island of shamans used to be Jesus or Jessie, until he passed away. He could go into trance upon request, and make cut-out carton dolls dance to the music from his tape player.

"Adis-adis" was what the Siquijodnon kids called the magic show, in reference to the frenzied, jerky dancing that the cut-out male and female figures launched into once an entranced Jessie waved his wand, sans invisible wires. "Parang adik" is what "adis-adis" means in Cebuano. As propagandists aver, repeat something often enough and it gains higher ground, from incredulity to believability.

So do we label Dorian Peña et. al. adis-adis, or faux addicts? Those drug tests have dismayed no less than Senator Jaworski, who surely knew that a former backcourt partner of his was heavily into substance use during their heyday. Now the legendary cager is reported to have stated, in calling for yet another Senate inquiry: "… (W)e have to make sure of the testing because on the part of the players that test positive, it’s like a blimp (sic) that, I hate to say this, will stay with them for the rest of their lives. There should be no room for error."

Oh, ironies. Make that "blip," not "blimp," which is a dirigible like the Zeppelin that crashed down in flames. I’m sure the good senator was misheard, or a copy editor missed out on the typo. But what one letter can do.

And while we’re at it, consider the irony suddenly inherent (an oxymoron?) in the word "positive" once it serves in the coattails of a drug test. In this case, to test negative is to pass it with flying, dunking colors.

Advertising slogans often try to make pauso or set a trend. Sometimes they succeed, but unfortunately go beyond satiety. "Nakakaumay" (now, there’s a word) has a particularly higher level of distaste than "nakakasawa." Such may be the case with Coke’s "Hottah hottah." Sure, it’s achieved a level of fad coinage. But it’s also become a bit of a peeve for its constant application. Maybe it’s the over-exposure that gets to me, especially since the ad glorifying Pinoy revelry appears nearly everytime there’s a time-out in an NBA playoff game.

Then there’s the echolalic neologism’s coupling with an old vernacular standby, "Mismo" —- which appears to have gained new meaning as our version of "indeed" or the Visayan "bitaw."

Some beer buddies recall a sound-alike used in a PBA ad years ago, one that heralded the advent of Fil-Ams in our pro hardcourts. Leading a five-man pack of Fil-Shams, er, okay, whatever, Asi Taulava, the blonde-dyed man mountain, heaves the ball to local counterpart Marlou Aquino, and gruffly dares: "Miss mo."

Ah, the beauty of bilingual couplings between English and Filipino. As was pointed out around the beer-ing table when that recollection was made, the proper injunction should of course be "I-miss mo," with the English verb sandwiched between a very ka-Pinoyan. But contractions and abbreviations are our birthright, as with SMS, MMS and LTO. (Now, that last has turned into an accursed acronym, just like the revived EWD. My word, what’ll they think of next? Play it again, Scam.)

Getting back to the SMB table, someone wonders if it shouldn’t be "I-shoot mo?" Oh, precisely, another counters, the negative injunction in "I-miss mo" partakes of psy-war.

Still another memory bank erupts with joy at the deep selection of a sometime appropriate if comic usage of "mismo" – this during the Marcos years. The joke then went that when Macoy asked a blunt confidante why the natives were getting restless, and what exactly he was up against, he was told: "Piyudalismo, kapitalismo, imperialismo, misis mo, at ikaw mismo."

Ah, the marvels of ala-Nabokovian punning across lingos colonial and homegrown.

Getting back to advertising efforts to popularize taglines, the Coke spinmeisters’ effort at celebrating Pinoy summer, just like McDo’s now overweaning use of native colloquialisms, slang, neologisms and portmanteaus ("Kita-kits!") may be said to take a leaf (in local parlance, gaya-gaya, puto maya) from the success reaped by the classic "Langhap-Sarap" for Jollibee, and for which we have the savvy Minyong Ordoñez to thank.

Yet the jury’s still out on Filipinized or Tagalized dubbing of Hollywood movies. Certain telenovelas did induce mass hysteria over Latino/a hunks and hussies mouthing euphemistic expletives (yet another oxymoron!) in Taglish. Now it’s Japanese animé and the Taiwanese Meteor Garden that come in Filipino. Well, my kids say they still can’t stand to watch an otherwise fave series, Shaman Kings, dubbed in Pinoyese. They much prefer the orig Japanese version with subtitles in English. When I asked why, it turned out to be the voice quality of the dubbing, not the language, that offended them.

That reminds me: When Voltes 5 and similar predecessors in fad animation entranced an earlier generation, I also found myself running up the wall whenever I heard those high-pitched, screeching voices. The only, and to my mind magnificent, exception was the baritone of professional dubber Noel Mallonga, who alone had the "K" (karapatan, or right) to re-voice hero or villain.

This matter of high-pitched voices has also become a standard feature among the young, mostly female, sportscasters that do "color" for basketball games, from the amateur leagues to the pro. Sure, we all like to watch a pretty face, but once that throat hits the awful high-Cs in simple verbalization, there goes everything but for a tin ear. Words are best rolled off the tongue, mercifully with a low voice, and never screeched. And we are best addicted to a pleasantry of tone.

Our peeves of the Pinoy summer that was should soon give way to serious reflection over the fate, not of rain, but a couple of nearly equally potent words: Spurs versus Nets. Me, I’ll take my man Manu and Co., whose great good fortune in this NBA year has had me wallowing in deep, loverly, retro addiction.

Adis-adis, anyone?