What’s oft been thought, but ne’er so well expressed…as the poet says…is exactly how badly the world can scrape against our nervous systems.

We need a new unit of measurement, a standard unit by which we measure and refer to the degree of annoyance, irritation, and aggravation caused by people, things or  states of affairs.

Let’s call this unit the Agro. Unlike the ohm or the watt its name is not derived from the name of a famous scientist. Trust me…there was no Ludovicus Agro or any such person.

According to the American Dictionary of Obscure Usage the term was first employed by professor Wilhelm Sackpfennig to express his annoyance with students who came to class unprepared.

“You have caused me much agro-vations,” he would declare. Later he shortened agro-vations to agros. “Mister Johnson, your translation has caused me two agros!”

His students thought this hilarious and for a semester or two undergraduates took up the term. With Sackpfennig’s retirement the expression fell out of use. Historians of slang assume it was replaced by expressions like “bummer,” “drag,” or “downer.”

Our individual levels of resistance to an agro attack are, of course, different. In my own case my teeth are set on edge to approximately the 2.75 agro level by folks who pronounce the words “restaurateur,” “entrepreneur,” and “liqueur” as if they rhymed with  the word “sewer”.

It is particularly annoying when these people are themselves restauratooers  or entreprenooers, but having identified the level and cause of my irritability I can simply relax  with a double shot of my favorite  liquoor.

Of course driving in traffic is an agro-enhanced experience nowadays. What are we to do with  Three-Agro-Arnie,  who refuses to get in line with the rest of us when the signs announce that traffic is funneling down to one lane?

While we honor the unwritten social compact that says things will go reasonably well if we stay cool and stay in line  ol’ Three-Agro-Arnie  rushes up to the spot where the lane narrows and then expects to nose in ahead of us. Someday we’ll all close up bumper to bumper  and make him sit there staring at the construction barriers until after rush hour.

I invite you, now, to add your own Agro.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under media, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.