In our increasingly polarized public discourse, creeping emotionalism is distorting the definition of important words. Call me old fashioned, but I like my words with their conventional meanings hanging neatly in their respective closets so we can find them when needed.

Local commentators here in Durham have called Mohammad Reza Teheri-azar’s recent drive into a crowd of students at UNC’s Pit a terrorist act. Well, no! He was a disturbed, young adult driving under the influence of parts of the Quran that fed his particular illness. He is no different from the loonies at Columbine or the mindlessly gullible followers of Charles Manson. He was sent not by Al Quaida, but by the crazed, misfiring neurons in his brain, acting on that most infantile of emotions, revenge. As in the song, Frankie & Johnnie,” he wanted to kill someone “who done him wrong.”

Because he attributed his actions to Allah, we needed a word that packed an emotional punch equal to the hatred we felt for what he did. So we grabbed the “T” word that’s been lying about on our couches since 9/11 instead of going to the word closets for the less charged but more accurate “unbalanced,” “deranged” or that old standby, “nuts.”

Elevating Teheri-azar to terrorist dignifies his squalid little journey and diminishes the true terrorism of the USS Cole, 9/11 and mid-East homicide bombers. Let us give those victims the honor and dignity their tragic deaths deserve under the true meaning and power of the word.

The word “lie” is also suffering a definitional shift when applied to President Bush and his administration as many letters to the Herald Sun indicate. “Lie” is a perennial word in most households, especially when dealing with our kids. “Did you write on the walls, Jimmy?” “No, Mom, it was Katie,” says Jimmy with the crayon in his hand.

That’s a lie — Jimmy tells Mom what he knows not to be true and doubles it by laying the blame on his sister.

Saddam’s possession of and inclination to use WMD’s has been since 1998 accepted truth in editorials and speeches by the NY Times, the Washington Post, Al Gore, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Joe Biden, Madeline Albright, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and countless other Washington weasels who don’t have the integrity to admit they were as fooled as President Bush. Remember, Russian, French, German and British Intelligence, as well as the CIA, also reported Saddam had WMD’s.

Calling Bush a liar by Jimmy’s (and my) time-honored definition means that the President knew for a fact that Saddam had no WMD’s but said he did anyway. Is that what people mean when they call him a liar? If so, that charge has never been made, let alone verified. More likely they mean that he was fooled, misguided, ill-informed, presumptive or a combination of all the above.

Nevertheless, his anti-War detractors and haters persist in misusing their distorted definition to sustain support for their cause. The collateral damage is that people of good will who are against the war on principle have been sucked into the vortex of this lie about “lie.” In this political context, this sturdy word is now a flaccid mess that means everything and means nothing.

In the wake of Katrina, “racist” has enjoyed a distorted renaissance, being mindlessly attributed to government stupidity, incompetence and mis-communication.

Racism’s meaning is potently simple — “the belief that race accounts for differences in character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.” This very clear and specific definition has been attached to all manner of negative comments about racial or ethnic minorities. Those who oppose illegal immigration are racists, those who hate hip-hop and are against, say, reparations, are racists, Rush Limbaugh is racist for making what was essentially a political observation about Donovan McNabb. Those who itemize such things have an endless list of “offenses” that have been placed in racism’s closet, where this important word is running out of space.

The emotional baggage attached to race relations in this country is so strong that it colors our perceptions of many things, most importantly the very language we use and need to honestly understand just what the hell is going on. Racism has been so misused over the years that its powerful truth has become meaningless and, ironically, more destructive.

Linguists speak of high language, the formal, codified language taught in schools and used in formal writing and low language, which we all speak. High language guardians eventually allow aspects of low language into the fold, a legal language immigration that invigorates the language with new life and imagination.

Some words are so important that their misuse becomes inflamatory, confusing the dialogue and delaying, if not preventing, our coming together. When we misuse such words, understanding flies out the window and we don’t want those distortions welcomed into the language. So let’s keep those word closets neat and our meanings precise.