Word for the wise ©
In 1966, Kingsley Amis remarked: "The treatment of media as a singular noun is now spreading to the upper cultural strata." That's by way of announcing that we have reached M in our Word for the wise © meanderings.
medium was used until relatively recently to mean, literally, the agency by which meaning was transmitted. Four centuries ago, Francis Bacon observed that "cognitions" are conveyed by "the medium of words" and terms such as "the medium of the cinema" are still used, but it was Marshall McLuhan with "the medium is the message", who began to reshape our view of the word. McLuhan's thesis that societies are shaped more by the style of their media than by the content ushered in the concept of the "media" as an entity which acted not so much as a mirror reflecting our world but as a lens with a particular focus giving the reader or listener an ideologically refracted view of things. Plural or singular? Websites, newspapers and TV stations are plural enterprises and the word should be too.
Next week, we're at "N". Candidates include "naval" and "navel".
