In an interview just heard on CNN, the former Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, uttered the buzzword “mind-set” at least three times in the same sentence. He did not know, one must presume, that this compound is actually a loan translation of the Latin forma mentis ‘form of mind/mentality’. The word forma is important because it is not to be translated by the English ‘set’ but by ‘form’. Nevertheless, this buzzword has established itself irrefragably in current speech and is to be heard emanating from the mouths of the most variegated speakers ad nauseam.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO