Catchy idiom finds linguistic need — it's a 'perfect storm'

BALTIMORE — Time magazine this week gazes into the future of arthritis as millions of baby boomers develop aching joints. The writer searches for an apt way to describe the trouble brewing, what with so many aging joggers and so much obesity, and comes up with this: "It's almost as if we were watching the formation of an epidemiological perfect storm."

An analyst at a Canadian mutual-fund company tells a reporter: "The coffee industry is facing a perfect storm of industrial, institutional and social failure." The New York Times says the environmental movement, "battered by two years of struggle with the Bush administration, is expecting the perfect storm when the 108th Congress convenes in January." The holiday travel season, coinciding with United Airlines' bankruptcy, "could create a perfect storm of traveler anxiety," according to The Sacramento Bee.

You've read the book. You've seen the film. Now, meet the metaphor.

Sebastian Junger's 1997 best seller, "The Perfect Storm," and the 2000 movie based on it have spawned a linguistic phenomenon, a phrase so versatile it can be applied to anything from the hype surrounding a 17-year-old basketball star in Ohio (Newsday) to Thanksgiving weekend traffic in Wisconsin (The Associated Press). In recent months, as references to the film and book have faded from the media, metaphorical perfect storms have begun to turn up in news databases several times a day.

The author's response

"Good Lord, I had no idea," Junger said after hearing a sampling of the uses to which his title is being put. Although he describes himself as "not much of a media consumer," the New York writer said he had noticed the term being applied to the ailing economy, "usually some government official being quoted on a fiscal crisis."

In Junger's book, the perfect storm results from the rare coincidence of three weather systems: a blast of cold air from Canada, a disturbance in the prevailing west winds, and the abundant moisture of a dying hurricane. In its new life as a metaphor, the term describes any extreme situation created by a rare convergence of several forces.

Junger said the proliferation of his phrase strikes him as "bizarre." But he doesn't object. "It's not the ultimate reward for writing a book," he said, "but it's sort of amusing."

The forces that change the language are as manifold and mysterious as those that drive the weather. A catchy phrase may be killed off by shifting fashion, transformed from trendy witticism to grating cliche. Think of "23 skiddoo," a wildly popular expression in the early years of the 20th century that now seems ridiculous.

Another phrase may flourish for a few months, bouncing around the echo chamber of radio and TV, then fade slowly from popularity. Take "Where's the beef?" — the line from a Wendy's commercial that Walter Mondale used to skewer Gary Hart in a 1984 debate between the Democratic candidates for president.

Yet another turn of phrase may catch on slowly but find a permanent spot in the lexicon. For instance: "Catch 22," from Joseph Heller's 1961 novel, whose title illustrates the way accidents shape the language. Its original title was "Catch 18"; it was changed to avoid confusion with Leon Uris' just-published novel "Mila 18."

If "Catch 22" almost didn't become a title, the same is true of "The Perfect Storm." Junger worried about offending relatives of his main characters, six Gloucester, Mass., fishermen who drowned when their boat sank in the October 1991 storm.

Concerns over book title

"I was afraid the word 'perfect' would seem callous," Junger said. "I changed it to 'The Storm.' But my editor said, 'No, no, "Perfect Storm" is much better,' so we changed it back."

The phrase was born of a 1993 conversation between Junger and Bob Case, of the National Weather Service in Boston. At the time, Junger thought his book would be about dangerous jobs, with a single chapter using the deadly storm to illustrate the hazards of commercial fishing.

"He was just a reporter — one of the many — and I explained that the meteorology had to happen just as it did in time and space to create such an intense storm," said Case, now retired in Pennsylvania. "When I used the term 'perfect' — 'perfect situation,' or 'perfect scenario' — it occurred to Sebastian to call this the perfect storm."

Junger, though, said he's pretty sure Case was the first to utter the magic words.

"He resorted to that phrase, sort of in exasperation, because I was having so much trouble understanding the meteorology," the author said.

Whoever first said it had no idea what he was starting. Richard Lederer, author of 30 books on language, said he thinks "perfect storm" is finding a permanent linguistic niche. It joins innumerable other weather metaphors, he notes, mentioning brain storm, cloud nine, gales of laughter and stealing someone's thunder.

"I think 'perfect storm' has a good chance of staying," said Lederer, who co-hosts a radio show on language in San Diego. "It's a good way of talking about a convergence of negative factors."