Our WTSBB today is disconnect, the noun, as in: There's an unfortunate disconnect between how humans naturally function and what a lot of technology delivers.
In my many years in the steno pool, I typed the word disconnect as a verb, not a noun. "It's a good idea to disconnect the television during a thunder and lightning storm." This is perfectly acceptable on my keyboard.
I note that sandpaper-throated Rod Stewart also uses disconnect as a verb in his hit Tonight's the Night when he exhorts the object of his desire to "disconnect the telephone line." And we all know where old Rod was going with that one.
Correct usage of disconnect seems to depend on which side of the Atlantic you're on. The British
Oxford Online Dictionary agrees with Mr. Stewart. They define disconnect as a verb, not a noun.
But the American Merriam Webster Dictionary online allows disconnect as a noun: "a lack of or a break in connection, consistency, or agreement."
I am not one of those typists who wishes to freeze the English language in some glorified past. But but we typists have to protect our keyboards from management consultants, bureaucrats and other practitioners of gobbledygook who wish to kidnap our language and cloak it in jargon.
Disconnect used as a noun is the unattractive, perfunctory language of a machine. It is not the language of a real thinking human being. Let's pull the plug on disconnect.
