The Word Curmudgeon #1: Decadent

Here comes a shocker: I just looked up “decadent” in my trusty Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, and discovered that it has nothing whatsoever to do with chocolate!

Just about the only place you ever see or hear “decadent” out there in popular usage is as a description of a dessert. It is generally either a.) a dessert named something like “Death By Chocolate,” containing heavy cream, butter, a dozen egg yolks and several pounds of chocolate, or for a not-very-good, fat-free, low-carbohydrate, “choklit-flavored” thing that people on TV commercials blissfully eat and try to convince us that if you eat it, you’ll never miss the Death thing.

There’s usually a female announcer, using one of those inflections that is designed to make males think she’s either naked or about to become naked when she says “decadent.”

But do you know what decadent means according to Webster? Do ya? It means:

1: marked by decay or decline 2: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of the decadents.

How about that?? Not a word about dessert! Gosh, you don’t suppose that ad copywriters don’t know what it means, do you? You don’t suppose that maybe they heard “decadent” and thought it meant... oh... maybe “delicious,” but never bothered to look it up, do you?

And just who are these “decadents” to whom Webster refers in definition 2? The are “one of a group of late 19th century French and English writers tending toward artificial and unconventional subjects and subtilized style.”

Why, of course they were. And they just loved rich chocolate desserts.