Many Japanese think English is taxing enough already without native English-speakers arguing among themselves over the correctness or propriety of this or that word. It happened again after the latest U.S. Masters golf championship in Augusta, Ga., when it seemed more media ink was spilled over Tiger Woods' casual use of the word "spaz" than over Phil Mickelson's smooth run to a second green jacket. Mystified language students shouldn't worry. This was a cultural controversy rather than a linguistic one. It was also a controversy without substance.
If you weren't absolutely glued to the television during the interview with Mr. Woods after he finished the tournament tied for third, you would have missed the millisecond that caused all the fuss. It came and went that quickly. Asked about his play, which had been strong down the fairways and weak on the greens, Mr. Woods replied with his usual candor: "I putted atrociously today. Once I got on the greens I was a spaz." As a commentary on his Web site explains, "Woods was poking fun at himself after three-putting three times and using 33 putts, and meant no disrespect."
Why was this disclaimer necessary? Anyone who knows golf, and Mr. Woods' game in particular, understood what he had meant: His poor putting cost him the championship, plain and simple. To describe his own slip-ups, he used a slang word -- derived from the word spastic, meaning "of or characterized by spasms" -- that the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines without qualification as "one who is inept." The American Heritage Dictionary, more guardedly, adds a warning tag to its definition of spaz, calling it offensive slang. It also appends that tag to its definition of the root word spastic, at least when it is used in a non-clinical way to mean clumsy and inept.