'Stuff'

By Carl Cahill

Increasingly, the buzzword of choice these days is "stuff," the apparent legacy of professional athletes who call upon it during postgame television interviews ("We did a lot of stuff out there tonight") to describe their winning moves. More exact talk requires a somewhat larger cerebral effort.

Knowing my dislike for vague words, my 6-year-old namesake and grandson who is in kindergarten and who boasts that his vocabulary includes "symmetrical," "attributes," and "complicated," baits me with "stuff," the most recent addition to his lexicon.

"What did you do at school today, Carl?" I ask. "Stuff," comes the reply. He waits for my reaction. "And what else did you do?"...