Our morning pair was talking about a recent poll in Britain regarding the best death scene in a movie.* They mentioned Psycho as number one and Bambi was number six. One DJ asked the other about Old Yeller.
Other DJ: That's a good one, it was very heart-rendering.
First DJ: Yes, heart-rendering.
Heart-rendering. *sigh* Let's see what The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has to say.
ren·der·ing
n.
1. A depiction or interpretation, as in painting or music.
While I've never seen Old Yeller, I'm pretty sure it's about a dog and not a painting of a heart or a musical score. Perhaps the movie itself is a metaphor for the heart?
2. A drawing in perspective of a proposed structure.
The movie's about a boy and a farm and a dog, from what I've heard. I don't think the father was an architect. Maybe a heart surgeon, and the "drawing...of a proposed structure" was of an artificial heart?
3. A translation: a rendering of Cicero's treatises into English.
Perhaps "Old Yeller" is English for "Cicero"? Or "treatise"?
4. A coat of plaster or cement applied to a masonry surface.
This must be it. The death scene in Old Yeller must have put a coat of plaster over viewers' hearts. How poetic.
For you who still don't know what's wrong with "heart-rendering", it's "heartrending", or "heart wrenching". This doesn't stop over 8000 webpages found by Google from using "heart rendering". Luckily, one of them discusses it instead of "uses" it:
Bartleby.com
Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
heartrending, heart-rendering (adjs.)
The real adjective is heartrending, meaning "heart-tearing" or "heartbreaking" and hence "grief-causing." Heart-rendering is a nonce word, possibly a malapropism, but more likely a deliberate jocularity.
I'd really, really like to believe that the DJs did it on purpose, with "deliberate jocularity", but I cannot. While I can understand (but not excuse) the commonfolk for this misuse (after all, "rend" isn't a word in many people's vocabularies, but "render" might be), it's the «professionals» who should be held responsible. But what would I write about then?
heartrendering n.
1._ _
( \/ )
\ /
\/
* Everyone knows that the best death scene in a movie is Paul Reubens' character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).
