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TIME for Dec.10,p 47 uses "fungible" in a way that seems to me the pretentious use of an obscure word when a more common word should have been chosen.
"In Afghanistan, where loyalty is fungible,........."
Here is what WordDectective says about "fungible"
As you can probably gather from that explanation, "fungible" has absolutely nothing to do with
the word "fun," and has no connection to "fungus" despite the involvement of lawyers.
"Fungible" comes from the Latin "fungibilis," which in turn came from the Latin phrase "fungi
vice," meaning "to serve in place of."
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In his worthless word for the day email tsuwm quotes William F. Buckley as saying "People get annoyed when you use words that do not come trippingly off the tongue of Oprah Winfrey...". He (WFB) then proceeds to assault us with the word velleity suggesting that it is the only word to use in a given circumstance. I think that people get annoyed when you use words that less than one tenth of one percent of the educated population have even the vaguest idea of the meaning of. On the other hand, I can remember his interviewing an Irish socialist back in 1970 or thereabouts who ran verbal rings around Mr. Buckley. It was a pure joy to listen to.
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is fungible that obscure a word? i ran into it long, long ago, when i was in my True Crimes reading jag.. this is still a popular catagory of books.. stories about serial killers and -- if memory servers, the word was in a book about a woman who serial killed her own children..and when she ran out, had some more..and repeated the act
and its been featured in comic's in The New Yorker and while that might not be everyday reading matter, it is read by a large portion of the reading public in US, and is considered a general interest magazine. where as true crime stories are general held to be rather low class reading..
the NYer comic had a senior partern in a law firm explaning to a new hire.. "Associates are fungible, partners are not" --
my understanding of the word is, it describes things, that while not identital, can be used interchangeably.
for example, paying for purchase with 4 quarters, rather than a $1 bill (paper). the difference is fungible.. If i ally myself with who ever is currently in power, and alway root for the winning side, my loyalties would be fungilbe.
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broadly, it means interchangeable; but it's another of those law terms which isn't very fungible in ordinary speech.
1832 Austin Jurispr. (1879) II. xlvi. 807 When a thing which is the subject of an obligation+must be delivered in specie, the thing is not fungible, i.e. that very thing, and not another thing of the same or another class in lieu of it must be delivered. Where the subject of the obligation is a thing of a given class, the thing is said to be fungible, i.e. the delivery of any object which answers to the generic description will satisfy the terms of the obligation. 1886 Sat. Rev. 25 Dec. 853 A certain number of persons+do not+regard books as ‘fungible’, but exercise a choice as to the books they read.
I guess you could stretch the point and say that specific loyalties are interchangeable with other loyalties, but yes, why not just say 'changeable'? (or check out Roget if you must: inconstant, fickle, hebdomadal, flaskisable(!), commutable, mutal, protean, shifty, transitive, variable, unstable...)
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While making my matutinal mile march I thought of what I believe is a serious objection to saying loyalty is fungible. There is no limitation in the definition of the number of times the exchange may be made. But I feel very confident that if an Afghan fighter changed sides more than once, something very unpleasant would be done to him when his duplicity was discovered.
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Pooh-Bah
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"Fungible" is certainly not exclusively a legal term. It is used in bookkeeping and accounting to differentiate types of inventory, which affect the methods of inventory control. And I thought that the use of "fungible" in the context of Afghan loyalty both appropriate and pithy. [shrug]
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Dear Sparteye: I politely strongly disagree with you. I say again it is bad journalism to use a relatively obscure word with debatable correctness. Apparently you missed the point that fungible things are fungible repeatedly. Any Taliban who defects, and then defects again is going to die unpleasantly. whichever side detects his duplicity.
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old hand
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How odd, I just finished reading this thread and then heard my mom downstairs explaining the subject to my brother.
I would guess that they're possibly referring to the common citizens, who don't really care who leads because they can still remember the last time the northern alliance was in charge. The cruelties were just as bad.
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Dear wwh:
I'm with Sparteye here. The word, though rare, is pithy, as she observed. And I think it goes beyond what is interchangeable. Function and fungible have the same latinate root: fungi, to perform. With the question of loyalties changing, there's much more involved that what is interchangeable. The change in loyalty brings out a change in performance of functions, actions, and operations. Death could be a consequence of such changes in operations, but fungibility captures the big picture better than interchangeability. Interchangeable seems too light here. Fungible seems more action-packed.
Just my take,
WW
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Dear WW: For the second time, I must politely disagree with you. Again, my first objection is in line with TIME's old slogan: Curt, Clear, Complete. I doubt very much that even ten percent of TIME's readers have encountered the word before. That would be OK in Atlantic Monthly, but not in a news weekly. In the second place, "fungible" involves two quantities which are being exchanged. Defection involves only one.I wondered mementarily if the author was being influence by subliminal recollection of a word TIME publicized almost twenty years ago, when special ammunition used in war game had projectiles that did not damage armored vehicles, but instantly broke into harmless fragments. and were thus called "frangible". It would be a better word for breaking the oath that all soldiers take to be loyal.
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