Impromptus today, Part IV of an Oslo Journal, is full of the usual horror and heroism. (The journal is about this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum, the world’s preeminent human-rights conference. Possibly the only genuine one, I’m not sure.) Horror and heroism aside, I sneak in a little language note today. Here it is:

Words go in and out of fashion, and “amazing” is now enjoying a run. Everything and everyone is “amazing.” Everyone and everything is “incredible” too.
The original meaning of “incredible” is pretty much lost, I think. Luckily, we have “unbelievable,” to convey that meaning. But “unbelievable” can mean “amazing” too, if you follow me . . .
(Not long ago, Charles Moore — I think it was Moore — told a story about a young person who very much enjoyed reading a “Credo.” “It’s incredible!” he exclaimed, in admiration.)

I have an e-mail from a golf-historian friend of mine. He writes, “Alister MacKenzie, the great architect, knew very well that to criticize a man’s home golf course was tantamount to calling his child ugly. So, when asked his opinion of a golf course he did not like, he would respond, ‘It’s just . . . incredible.’ And that seemed to satisfy everyone equally.”

Do you know that my little old home course in my little hometown of Ann Arbor is a MacKenzie course? Wish I were pegging it up there today. Why I haven’t been asked to join Winged Foot, Maidstone, or another of the New York-area courses, I can’t tell you. I’m a muni rat all the way.