Iconicity, Scrambled Jets, Compose/Comprise (reprise)

Iconic. 

I'm trying to understand. I don't know very much of the history of this phenomenon, but I imagine it really got up and running in the 1970s, for whatever reason. Google says 'Something is iconic if it has achieved a level of fame where it stands for something larger than itself.' So Marylin Monroe is iconic. Of course to be called 'iconic' is the dream of, say, Madonna. Which brings me to the point: Icons, in an older sense the word, are usually Byzantine portaits of saints. Things of reverence, to worship; there is something holy about them. Is the idea behind the modern use of the word is to hint that the referent is a person likewise to be held up as a higher than ordinary people, that their symbolic significance in the world of fame is of a higher plane? Yes of course; to me, Google seems to have it spot on -- but the affinity with the older sense of the word is not accidental. What is going on is not that people want fame for being famous. No, at least not explicitly; that would be too transparent. One has to at least fool oneself. But just because fame is the currency, people are going to covet that status whatever the basis, and will do what they can to encourage others to bestow it upon them. Indeed a peculiar trait of fan-culture is that the fans are often fixated on bestowing it. They make lists of 'icons' and debate about them. Here are three such lists, got from the Internet.

This first list of mostly Hollywood stars seems to fit my sense of the words, which connotes that the figure has permament staying power: 

1. Marlene Dietrich. 
2. Katherine Hepburn.
3. Bette Davis. 
4. Joan Crawford. 
5. Greta Garbo.
6. Elizabeth Taylor. 
7. Humphrey Bogart. 
8. Cary Grant. 
9. Spencer Tracy. 
10. John Wayne. 

No doubt taking the term as closer to just 'famous': 

1. Johnny Depp. 
2. Leonardo DiCaprio. 
3. Morgan Freeman. 
4. Will Smith. 
5. Heath Ledger. 
6. Christopher Nolan. (Who?) 
7. Helena Bonham Carter.
8. Sacha Baron Cohen (!). 

And (Music stars): 

1. Elvis Presley. 
2. Madonna.
3. John Lennon. 
4. Michael Jackson.
5. Beyonce. 
6. Taylor Swift. 
7. Tina Turner. 
8. Dolly Parton. 

I can't help but think this phenomonon is a symptom of people's need to deify. It is not accidental that it arose with the decline of religon. Well, that, in combination with the rise of mass media. There were no icons (in the newer sense) until the first films and music recordings (Greta Garbo, Caruso).  

Scrambled Jets.

Another case of my shaking my fist as the radio or TeeVee. Whenever military jets are suddenly flown for defensive purposes, the newcasters say that the jets have been 'scrambled'. Always, as if they can't let the chance slip for using that word. One has the image of eggs being scrambled in a bowl, suggesting, like the paths of bits of yolk, the image of sudden incoherence in the paths of the individual jets -- or something -- which is a bit alarming. Or maybe the comparison is between a quick making of an omelette for dinner and the quick take-offs of the jets. But not anything more, that I can see. So what is the point of this insistence of this rather unusual form of words? People naturally think that it does have a precise meaning, but are uncertain exactly what meaning it is. I think that it is case of our newscasters adopting a bit of faux technical seriousness, positively revelling in the chance to speak as the experts do, as in the case of 'triage'. Even if it does have a technical, militaristic meaning, I doubt many people know what it is. 
 

Comprise and Compose (reprise). 

Long ago I observed that these two words are not interchangeable. But 'is comprised of' is often wrongly used for 'is composed of'. Roughly: 'Comprise' is a counterposed version of 'compose'. The correct way of speaking, for example, is that six chapters compose the book, but that the book comprises six chapters; that a group comprises its members, whereas the members compose a group. We can also say that the group (say the Beatles) is composed of its members (John, Paul, George and Ringo), but not that the group is comprised of its members. 

I want to note now the obvious point that this sort of pattern is widespread -- where words A and B are similar phonetically and indeed lexically and therefore, erronously, thought the same. A person thinks comprises is just fancy for composes, and the misuse spreads (or maybe it is widespread just because of the similarity, not so much due to copying others). Excusable because the two are so similar. It is like instants and incidences, flaunted and flouted, egregious and outrageous, fortunate and fortuitous, the one is easily mistaken for the other.