RENDERED USELESS

I was listening to the radio once again, which, as I've mentioned before, can lead to problems for me, not only from pop music and its liberalizing of language, but from the «professional» public speakers known as DJs.

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).