Word of the Day: Terminate
Many writers don’t distinguish this word from ‘end’. But I see ‘terminate’ as being much more limited. It implies a term, that is, a period of time set in advance during which something should exist or occur, and at the end of that time it ceases to exist or occur.
Thus a president has a term of office, or a mortgage debt has a term at the end of which the debt should be fully paid. Pregnancies have terms, and medical jargon refers to babies born at 40 weeks as ‘full term’, while those born earlier are ‘pre-term’, or ‘preemies’. College students take mid-term exams. All of these are periods of time set in advance, and we expect that something should stop happening or cease to exist at the end of that set time.
Speaking of the ‘term’ of someone’s life extends this core meaning slightly. It implies that fate or some deity has decreed the day on which each person will die. It has been a common idea in most times and places, though it’s not popular in the West today.
From that metaphorical meaning of ‘term’, we have extended the meaning further to ‘terminate’ as a euphemism for ‘kill’ or ‘assassinate’. This use suggests a fate-oriented worldview: The victim’s life was preordained to end at that time, and the murderer was merely the tool that Fate used to accomplish its ends. It’s an extended metaphor that can still be consistent with the core meaning if you use it right.
But beyond that point, modern uses for ‘terminate’ become silly. The worst in my view is to call an abortion the ‘termination’ of a pregnancy: Pregnancies have well-defined terms of 40 weeks. An abortion by definition occurs at some time other than the end of the natural term.
Runner-up for worst use of ‘terminate’ is with employment. This might have made sense decades ago when workers could reasonably expect to stay with one company for their entire working lives. That would create a natural term of employment, which could then be terminated. But today few workers or employers have any idea how long they will stay together, so the idea of a term of employment is usually nonsense, and therefore terminating employment should also be nonsense. With most “terminations” of employment, no term has ended.
(The exception would be for an employee working under a contract. If the contract has a set term, such as the year-to-year employment contracts that I understand are common in academia, then it would make sense to say that the contract and resulting employment relationship terminated at the end of their stated term.)
A final problem with ‘terminate’ for ending someone’s employment is that the common syntax often makes the employee the verb’s object: “He has been terminated.” This is exceptionally clumsy usage, because it suggests the older meaning of termination as death. It leaves the question: Has the employee been killed, or merely fired? An attempt at euphemism ironically becomes far more threatening than a more direct word.
Abortion and employment are not the only areas where we hear ‘terminate’ used on something that doesn’t have a term. I will confess to having drafted contracts in which certain conditions (such as breach) led to termination of the contract before its stated term. In hindsight, some other verb would have worked better. But I’m not alone in my poor usage. Google points out that ‘terminate’ is very common in computer programming, where it describes the end of programs or processes that don’t have natural chronological terms. And beyond that it pops up in all sorts of circumstances to describe something that stops occurring or existing regardless of whether it has a natural term.
Bonus Word of the Day: Execute. Lawyers like to use this word to refer to signing legal documents. That usage is consistent with the word’s historical meaning of putting a command or plan into effect. The trouble is that the word is closely associated with the execution of court orders that certain convicted criminals be killed. That following or execution of a court order has become so closely associated with killing someone that many people have no idea that the word could mean anything else.
So here I give way to modernity. It may be etymologically accurate to ask someone to execute his last will and testament. But why add the stink of death to an already morbid conversation? I just ask them to sign.