Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Political pundits and regular folks alike are pouring it on everything from references to Dubya to a Web site soaking up its 15 minutes of fame.
By DAVE SCHEIBER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 8, 2000
Three elderly men were sitting on a bench outside a Publix grocery store in St. Petersburg the other day, musing about George W. Bush's speech to the Republican National Convention the night before.
First man: "Well, he's got gravitas."
Second man: (hearty laugh)
Third man: "Yeah! Gravitas."
Gravitas? What's that? Can you buy it at Publix to serve over your mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving? And why is everyone suddenly speaking Latin?
Political pundits -- from network TV to shopping center seniors -- are gravitating to gravitas with a passion. It is the Word of the Moment (for the record, passing "parse" in political pre-eminence). If you haven't heard it yet, or you think gravitas is, say, the name of the guy who got kicked off Survivor -- oh wait, that's Gervase -- relax. There's plenty of time to get in the gravitas swing of things.
Webster's gives this definition: n. a certain reserved dignity; propriety and good taste in behavior and speech, as of a leader or official.
What's so nice about gravitas is it sounds weighty, offering a certain air of, well, gravity to the dialogue. Media coverage of Bush has given the word its day in the sun, as endless analysts have pondered whether the Texas governor is serious and steady enough to run the nation.
It turns out that gravitas has been with us for quite some time, though you may not have realized it. A quick search of Nexis, the online research service, reveals 875 references to the word in newspaper stories in 1995 and a whopping 918 in 1996. From 1997-99, gravitas really started to get hot, topping the 1,000 mark each year.
But Dubya still deserves some credit here. Six months into 2000, gravitas has already broken 1,000 on the Nexis scale -- a torrid pace that makes it the Mark McGwire of catchy political references.
Who uses gravitas? Well, editorial writers and columnists love it. George Will added a twist to the term the other day, writing, "If there can be derivative gravitas -- seriousness by association -- these doubts have been lessened by Bush's choice of Cheney." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd really likes the word. A check of our electronic library puts her at the front of the pack -- she has gravitased four times since 1996.
Still, nobody can touch the all-time champ, that noted Roman political animal, Cicero.
"Oh, he was big on gravitas -- it was one of his favorite political words," says Dan Sheerin, professor of Latin at the University of Notre Dame, who scoured his department's text data base for classical Latin to tabulate Cicero's total for the St. Petersburg Times. "He uses it something like 287 times in his speeches."
Cicero clearly had gravitas, but who else? News stories in the '90s have attributed the trait of authority to legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, to Watergate heroes such as Sam Ervin, Howard Baker and Judge John J. Sirica. Hey, online movie site "Mr. Showbiz" says Wesley Snipes even added a "welcome dose of gravitas" to the movie Blade.
Companies can also have gravitas -- especially Gravitas Inc., a 5-year-old Houston architectural firm. "We're getting a lot of e-mails and calls and hits on our Web site, I'll tell you that," says company president Malcolm Moorehead. "People want to know if we're associated with the Democratic Party, or just want to know what gravitas means. So every one of us here always has a definition in front of us."
Can average folks have gravitas, too? According to Latin professor Sheerin, not to worry, we already do. "If you're tired, then your limbs have gravitas," he explains. "Or something like sleep can have that quality -- the gravitas of your sleep can make it hard to wake up."
Excellent. Now, please pass the gravitas.
St. Petersburg Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this story.