Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
I was recently reminded once more of how I am out of touch with contemporary popular culture when I stumbled across an assessment of Marc-André Hamelin’s rendition of a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody as “retarded.” My first reaction was dismay, because I have always admired Mr. Hamelin’s dexterity, expressiveness, and virtuosity, and I could not imagine what would lead the correspondent to label his playing—even of Liszt—in such a negative fashion. Of course, I then realized that this is another one of those cases in which the uses to which a word can be put have multiplied beyond recall—almost to the point of incomprehensibility. As one definition for this word in the Urban Dictionary puts it: “In this day and age, ‘retarded’ is just another word for cool, dope, tight, chill, or whatever you say when you like something.” (Note that this is a bit of an assumption on my part; the number of entries in the Urban Dictionary is dauntingly large, and the definitions supplied are often quite contradictory.)
