I Blame Gatsby.

Well, Fitzgerald. According to OED, he used the phrase "reached a crescendo" in The Great Gatsby, circa 1925. And it's been madness ever since.

To be fair, Fitzgerald wrote, "The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home." So maybe he meant, "reached a passage in the music where they started to climb in volume and intensity." I doubt it. But it's possible.

I was thinking about this while reading the various Alias post-morts this morning -- that irksome phrase, "reached a crescendo," showed up again, and so I went spelunking in OED like Sydney last night in Rambaldi's Styrofoam Magic Mount Subasio. (Guys. Couldn't you have afforded a better set for that scene? But I digress.)

Crescendo is from the Italian (and, of course, Latin before that) crescere, to increase. You don't build to the crescendo. That doesn't make sense. It isn't the summit; it's the gradual process of heading to it. In music and in life. Growing. Waxing. Like the crescent moon.

Climax, crown, culmination, height, peak, pinnacle, summit, top, zenith. High point. Jaysus, just use "payoff." All those words mean the place the climb should take you, and what people think they mean when they write, "reached a crescendo." And don't give me the, "but everybody uses it that way now so usage makes it okay." If everybody else were jumping off a mountain before they reached the top, would you do it too?

It doesn't sound arty or learned or any of that. It just sounds like you want to sound arty by skewing the meaning of a specific artistic term to suit your artistic purpose. If you're F. Scott Fitzgerald, you may do that. Everybody else, just stop it.

Posted on May 23, 2006 to fussbudget

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