Keanu Reeves, dictionary writer

Why not? Because I8217;m anti-matrix. I do not like the word.

Apparently, I am alone. Seldom before in the history of English language usage has a single word burst on the scene quite like 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217;.

Thirty years ago, with the exception of a few nerdy mathematicians, nobody used the word 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217;. Now it is used 8212; sometimes correctly, but more often not 8212; to mean everything from a computer network to a database, from a spreadsheet to the Internet, from a hierarchy to a source of origin, from an information flow to a maze, from an alternate universe to a simple list.

Not to mention its use as a brand name. Today, you can cruise in a Matrix, condition with Matrix, read a literary magazine called Matrix, or purchase goods and services 8212; from consulting to aluminum siding to manicures 8212; from one of the thousands of companies that have seized upon the name.

On and on it goes: Matrix Regurgitated.

We need to set some limits, and we need to ask why this once obscure word is being used with abandon 8212; willy-nilly, as it were. Merely because it 8216;8216;sounds cool8217;8217;? Because it makes one think of Keanu Reeves? Or, far more likely, is it being used precisely because no one understands what it means?

What we have here, is a failure to communicate, yet another example of the kind of obfuscation that we end up being force-fed and, most often, swallowing whole.

It8217;s the sort of word that your computer tech crew at work uses, and you nod and pretend you understand 8212; the kind of word that appears as a charge on your telephone bill, and, as extremely important as it sounds, you haven8217;t a clue what it is.

Go ahead, try not to pay your 8216;8216;universal network interconnectivity matrix8217;8217; charge. See what happens. We fall for it. We8217;d rather pay up than admit we don8217;t understand. We may even resort 8212; in an effort to appear technologically hip 8212; to using it ourselves.

To fully understand how insanely out of control the use of the word is, one need only Google 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217;. Type 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217; into that Internet search engine 8212; so popular we now use it as a verb using nouns as verbs, also very cutting-edge.

Anyway, when you type 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217; into Google, you get 20 million hits. That is more than twice the number you get if you type in 8216;8216;beer8217;8217;, three times as many as you get with 8216;8216;ham8217;8217; and five times as many as 8216;8216;potato8217;8217; will receive.

But unlike ham, potatoes and beer 8212; all staples of life that we can easily identify 8212; 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217; has many and varied meanings, few of them clear. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary lists six.

It can be something from which something else originates, develops or takes form, a meaning that derives from the Latin word it stems from, mater, meaning mother or womb.

It can also be a mould from which a relief surface is made; the material in which a fossil or other material is embedded; the intercellular substance in which tissue cells are embedded; the thick part at the base of your toe and fingernails from which the new nail develops; a rectangular array of mathematical elements; or a main clause that contains a subordinate clause.

The first use of the term in mathematics was in 1850, by Edward James Sylvester, who, years before he went on to teach at Johns Hopkins University, wrote, 8216;8216;For this purpose we must commence, not with a square, but with an oblong arrangement of terms consisting, suppose, of m lines and n columns.

8216;8216;This will not in itself represent a determinant, but is, as it were, a Matrix out of which we may form various systems of determinants by fixing upon a number p, and selecting at will p lines and p columns.8217;8217;

Things would only get more confusing in the centuries ahead. With the onset of computer science, 8216;8216;matrix8217;8217; began spawning new meanings. And with the onset of the Matrix movies, it took another quantum leap.

It was then that the word began taking on what linguist Thomas Field calls 8216;8216;a cultural resonance8217;8217;. Field saw the first Matrix movie, but isn8217;t sure if the word refers to the apparent world that people live in, or, as his 15-year-old son maintains, the computer program that maintains that fictitious world.

8216;8216;My guess is that this term was already cool when the film was made, because it was connected with technology, and that is 10 times cooler since then, because now it has what is almost a metaphysical connotation too,8217;8217; he said.

So how should one use Matrix?

I have only three words of advice: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.LAT-WP