Every era suffers a lexicon of invasive usages. Words are as subject to fashion as morals and lapels, politics and popular music. Today's merely tiresome coinage is tomorrow's infuriatingly ubiquitous cliche.

We live in an era of incontinent celebration and exponential hyperbole. There is nothing that cannot be deemed iconic. Iconic, that is, in the sense acquired through recent abuse. It seems to have a multitude of meanings: notable, celebrated, zealously promoted, revered, long established, covert, authentic, enviable...