Definitions for words overused by ESPN analysts: Intangible
Wiktionary defines intangible as “incapable of being perceived by the senses; incorporeal,” in other words, something that you can’t see, feel, touch, smell, or hear.” The sportscasters and analysts of our world, however, seem to define it far more broadly, like as in “fudge factor.”
Intangible allows an analyst to prattle on for 20 minutes or so about the comparative merits of one team over another, including vague allusions to, or the foreshadowing of, inevitable victory, then ultimately reverse and confound their entire soliloquy by announcing that the underdog might have the advantage in terms of the intangibles. Now, what are these intangibles, besides a pretty good name for a rock band? Basically, it’s usually a player who is pretty good at one particular thing, and more specifically, whether that player will do that thing well on a particular day.
This seems pretty corporeal to me, even if we don’t consider that we get corporeal from the Latin corpus, n. body, and we’re literally talking about a person. This is where the beauty of intangible starts to be seen–it isn’t the player or the skill that matters, but whether it will occur in great enough proportion to offset the performance of both teams as a whole. Also, note that only in sports can the word exist in the plural, i.e intangibles. Most importantly, it replaces the word unpredictable even though it means the same thing, because it’s embarrassing to use such a word when issuing predictions.
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