There was a host of words and phrases that I had grown up mispronouncing, misunderstanding, and/or misusing until being corrected in adulthood. I can’t really blame my gifted magnet program public schooling in Flint, Michigan for this, as our teachers and the curriculum had us comprehending and using fifty-cent words by the time the training wheels had barely come off of our bikes. Both of my parents were educated and had gone to college (my dad held dual PhDs), so it wasn’t that, either. My Liberian-born father wasn’t going to win any awards for his diction, but he knew what he was talking about. My midwestern-born mother enunciated well enough, but she also had the maddening tendency to make up and regularly use terms I had thought were real.
I’d end up occasionally using some of her gibberish when with my peers, to the confused expressions of my classmates or the barely suppressed laughter of my friends. I can’t entirely blame her, though, as some of my unintentional misuse of the English language was totally my fault. It was in one of my earliest, full-length essays for Curbside Classic maybe nine years ago when I had misused “behest”, thinking it meant something along the lines of “disgust”. (It means command or insistence.) One of the commenters basically told me to get a thesaurus. I was traveling during the Thanksgiving holidays when that piece went live, and I had no access to a computer at the time. Somehow, I had managed to log onto this site from my flip-phone and in the most cumbersome process, ever, I amended the text. It was one of my shining moments here at CC.
Another example of my creative use of words was when I had used the non-expression “for all intensive purposes” in an essay during my junior year at university. My instructor, Ms. Morris, wrote in the margins how she wondered just how intensive those purposes actually were, before cluing me into what the phrase actually is. I write all of this just to set the stage for how the “Expresso” trim level of the Plymouth Neon never really had a chance for me to ever take it seriously. I will still occasionally hear an individual order an “expresso” from a barista.
If I know the person well enough, I might suggest in a light, funny way that the word is actually “espresso”, without trying to come across as a snob. I luuuurve coffee, but I’m not that guy who goes around correcting people to try to gain some sort of imaginary upper hand. I have known people like that. My thought process is that if I can discretely help spare someone the future pain of the recognition of continued mispronunciation of a word or misuse of a phrase, they will appreciate and maybe even thank me for it.
I’ve written four paragraphs about embarrassing, personal examples of the mangling of the English language and haven’t even mentioned the subject car. That’s because I could probably use an espresso at this writing in mid-September to jolt the old brain after a day of fun, sun, a little work, and a whole lot of walking. Suffice it to say that today’s Curbside Musings ain’t (yes, I just used that word) cerebral, but I thought this Neon was an interesting subject by way of being a two-door Plymouth from the late ’90s. It’s also from the first-generation design’s penultimate year. In fact, by ’98, there were just a couple of two-door Plymouths available – this and the Prowler. Talk about extremes on a continuum.
This particular car was built in Belvidere, Illinois, and features a 2.0 liter, dual-overhead cam four-cylinder engine with a healthy 132 horsepower to move its 2,500-pound curb weight. Plymouth moved about 87,100 Neons for ’98, of which 18,500 (21%) were coupes. By comparison, the Dodge sold almost 130,000 Neons that same year, which were basically identical to what we see here.
This Neon represents the final mainstream, two-door model ever sold by Plymouth. The Expresso trim level wasn’t much for substance, adding just power windows and an AM/FM cassette to the Highline’s added features… and that name. Honestly, on most days I can’t decide whether I find “Expresso” to have been a game attempt at fun or just misguided and ridiculous. If I had been part of the decision-making process at Chrysler, it would have been at my behest that the name of this trim level be reconsidered.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
July 2024.
I wish I could like these cars. I got my first experience driving stick in a 95 coupe by one of my mom’s friends. In 2000 my best friend bought a 4 door expresso. Total heap of a car. I’m glad she bought the extended warranty. 3 transmissions later she traded it to the garage that was doing work on her husband’s VW beetle. They were really cute and advanced but they were not good cars. I wish they had been they’re still nice looking but….
For whatever reason I knew of the Expresso but it never clicked about this being a cutesy (I’m being charitable this morning) mangling of the language for the intent of selling a car.
Then again, I have long known people who mutilate the language like there is no tomorrow. Isn’t there some linguistics professor somewhere who specializes in the study of butchered English? Maybe I missed my true calling in life…
You are quite timely. Later this morning I have a get together of field supervisors and I am giving a presentation titled “The History and (Ab)Use of the English Language”. It’s related more to curbing the number of certain types of words too many are letting fly at the wrong times and places. Did you know the word “fart” dates back to the year 1250?