one step closer to the end of civilization as some of us know it

I usually wear black jeans. I once noticed a woman walking up Madison Avenue in the spring, when the flowers and the stores are open, and she was wearing straight black jeans, a pale blue oxford shirt, and a navy blazer. Big sunglasses, medium brown boots, natural leather shoulder bag. I immediately aspired to that look, and while I haven't yet achieved her casual elegance, I have the black jeans and the oxford shirt, and some candidates for the navy blazer visit from time to time. Formal tryouts will be held again at the end of March.

Meanwhile, I've also been considering a variation on that look - black leather jacket, black crewneck tee, and faded medium blue jeans with a hardworking and dependable outlook on life, close-fitting, world-weary, but still in one piece. In a properly ordered world, this would not require a treasure hunt.

Several hundred try-ons later, I decided to get help with the project. In the course of seeking help, I learned a new and frightening non-word: DESTRUCTED.

It appears that DESTRUCTED is meant to be to jeans what DISTRESSED is to furniture. In the case of furniture, the poor tables and chairs are hit with hammers and beaten with chains in the factory, so that when they reach the showroom floor they look like they have a past, possibly even a more elegant and adventurous past than they will have in their future in your dining ell - and you pay for this.

In the case of jeans... "DESTROYED" denim has been around for a while. This is denim that is so distressed as to be on the verge of a meltdown. It has slash marks, threadbare spots, and at least one tear over the knee, and its color is uneven. This is not a great look for me. I have to wait for the Great Fashionista in the Sky to discover that jeans hug the thighs more becomingly when they are not falling apart, the jeans, that is.

While waiting, my thighs and I came across this new expression: DESTRUCTED. The past tense indicates that the writer thinks there is a verb - TO DESTRUCT. There is not. There is a noun, DESTRUCTION, and its corresponding verb is DESTROY. As noted, "destroyed" denim is nothing new.

There's also a noun CONSTRUCTION. Clever little noun, it has two meanings: the building or setting up of something, like a bomb shelter or a theory, in which case if you wanted to use an "action word" (a/k/a verb), you would use "CONSTRUCT." The other meaning of construction is "an interpretation," and if you wanted to use a related verb in your discussion of the construction of a literary passage, you would use "CONSTRUE." Unless, of course you were discussing the STRUCTURE of the literary passage in which case we'd be back at CONSTRUCT.

And to give the discussion a final fillip, we have a late starter, DECONSTRUCT (verb) and its noun form, DECONSTRUCTION. In literary criticism, deconstruction is what happens when an intellectual analyzes a writing or an event or a theory by picking it apart and separating it into individual parts and then discussing them, to no good end.

I've also had cooks tell me that what's been put before me is a deconstructed version of, say, onion tart, in which case I would see a little tangled heap of caramelized onions, a few tiny cheese puffs, and something crunchy and garlicky. Actually this makes a nice little appetizer, you can eat it in parts or make different combinations of the components (would this count as UN-DECONSTRUCTION?). What this means, in real life, is that someone in the kitchen is actually thinking about flavors and ingredients, which I think is a good thing.

RECONSTRUCTION means to rebuild, and can be a controversial subject of discussion  in many parts of the country.

So, anyway, if I said that I made a deconstructed version of Macaroni & Cheese for dinner last night, if you'd been to my house you would have been served with some nice cheese, say, St André, Camembert and Taleggio, and a sourdough baguette. Cheese and something made with flour.

What is NOT A VERB, or indeed is not even a WORD OF ANY KIND is DESTRUCT. It is at best pretentious illiterate usage, and I hope when we've finished the bread and cheese we can reflect upon how to stamp it out and prevent its recurrence.

Oh, and we don't need "wiseness" either.