Is it just me, or is "relatable" the most overused word of 2018? This feel-good term, meaning "possible to understand, like, or have sympathy for," has been an annoying sugar puff in our conversations for decades, but now it's become an overstuffed eclair.
Time magazine, for instance, served it up twice in a recent review of new albums by Kacey Musgrave ("her bright world of warm chords and relatable storytelling") and Sophie Allison, aka "Soccer Mommy" ("her certain unpolished candor ... becomes intensely relatable").
Meanwhile, a marketing executive boasted that Sports Illustrated's new swimwear collection is "affordable and relatable ... Now every woman can feel like a Sports Illustrated cover model!"
My favorite example comes from a recent NBC News interview with an adolescent girl describing the heroine of the movie "Eighth Grade": "For me it was really relatable because I'm kind of exactly like her a little bit." Ya think?
But the Typhoid Mary of our current epidemic is undoubtedly Meghan Markle, the down-to-earth Duchess invariably described by journalists and commentators as "relatable."
Like Markle, the word "relatable" has a compelling backstory. Until the 1960s, this adjective was used to describe only two things: a story that could be told ("his saga was relatable through poetry") or things that could be causally connected ("these seemingly disparate incidents are relatable").
The first Oxford English Dictionary citation of "relatable" with the meaning "able to be related to" is a 1965 article in the education journal Theory Into Practice: "Boys saw teachers as more directive, while girls saw them as more 'relatable.'"
By the early 1980s "relatable" had leaked from educationese into general parlance. In 1981, Bob Eubanks, host of the TV gameshow "The Newlywed Game," told the Washington Post that his show featured "relatable humor, the kind that takes place in every home."
But not every home finds "relatable" to be relatable. Some purists have grumped that this new meaning of "relatable" doesn't follow the rules for adding an "-able" suffix and should really be "relate-to-able." Of course, they're conveniently ignoring the many other words formed from two-word verb phrases, e.g., "reliable" (able to be relied on) and "laughable" (able to be laughed at).
Most of us can identify with the struggles of "relatable" in its plucky climb to acceptability. So "relatable" is relatable and clearly here to stay.
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.
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