Toe in the Water

Light the Blue Touch Paper

Light the Blue Touch Paper

That’s what it used to say on the instructions to fireworks when I was a kid. What the heck is “touch paper”? Still beats me, but I’ve always known what colour blue is, so I figured it out.

Today I remembered another little cracker bugbear of mine so let’s do some lighting. It all concerns the difference between “diffuse” and “defuse” (the second turns out to be quite appropriate). It was when I was watching one of those little short videos that are all the rage on YouTube at the moment. Probably because our attention spans are so degraded now that shorts are about all we can cope with - but that’s another post.

Anyway, in this video a guy starts on about a situation being “diffused.” Which means the situation got spread out all over the place and, as a result, became diluted. Now I’m prepared to bet that the guy didn’t mean that at all, judging by the context. What he should have said was that the situation became defused, meaning that the heat was taken out of a potentially explosive matter. And now we get the point of the title to this post.

How can I be certain that I did not mishear what the feller said? The two words sound pretty similar when part of a sentence, it’s true. But those short videos all seem to have captions so that, if the sound effects aren’t good, you can just read what’s said. And these confirmed that the guy was diffusing matters somewhat.

It’s the kind of thing that gets my goat. So, if you don’t want this particular firework to blow up in your face, remember to diffuse your information but defuse any possible sources of trouble.


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