MacGyverism

It wasn’t very difficult to track down the meaning or history of the word MacGyverism mostly because it was a straight road to where you might think it would lead. According to the Collins Dictionary, MacGyverism refers to any person who uses the resources at hand to successfully resolve a situation in which they find themselves.

Angus MacGyver, played by American actor Richard Dean Anderson, always found ingenious ways to get out of what seemed to be impossible situations from 29 September 1985 through to 21 May 1992 on the U.S. television show MacGyver. He was a fictional secret agent and a strong ally to social and environmental causes who relied on the practical application of scientific principles and on-the-spot inventiveness using everyday items at his immediate disposal.

To most fictional characters in the series as well as viewers watching the show, MacGyver used random and useless pieces, tying them together to create an unexpected and effective way to counteract inevitable danger certain to spell his demise.

The items he used most often were his Swiss Army knife, a roll of duct tape (which he conveniently kept in his back pocket and flattened so it would fit without creating bulk), a sturdy plastic ID card, a Timex watch, strike-anywhere matches, paper clips, chewing gum, and a flashlight. The character was a multilinguist fluent in English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and American Sign Language, and he know International maritime signal flags as well as Morse code.

All this was possible for MacGyver in light of the fact his character was written as having a genius intellect and a penchant for improvisation and adaptability.

The term MacGyverism is derived from the television character and his amazing ability to overcome dangerous situations most others would be unable to survive.

On 19 October 2006, Hudson Street Press published “What Would MacGyver Do? True Stories of Improvised Genius in Everyday Life” by Brandon Vaughan. The book, according to the blurb, was inspired by the fictional character Angus MacGyver and included this passage:

Inspired by television’s Angus MacGyver (played by Richard Dean Anderson), a secret agent who relied on his brains and scientific prowess – not to mention duct tape and a Swiss Army knife to save the day, the “MacGyverisms” recounted range from the concrete (using Chex Mix to provide traction in an icy parking lot) to the intangible (saving a relationship with the perfect turn of phrase).

The term has also led to the verbs “to MacGyver” and “MacGyverize.” In fact, “to MacGyver” was courtesy of Stephen Lunch on 1 August 1997 in his article published in the Orange County Register.

To fix something without benefit of tools or a manual is called “to MacGyver” a solution after the television show in which Richard Dean Anderson disarmed nuclear bombs with paper clips.

In an interview with MacGyver producer and writer Stephen Downing for the Christian Science Monitor published on 24 December 1987, David R. Francis wrote this:

“[MacGyver] relies on his ingenuity and knowledge, rather than violence, to complete dangerous missions. [Downing] calls the use of science techniques as “MacGyverisms.”

It sounds to Idiomation that those who enjoyed the television series took to MacGyverizing because they liked what the main character stood for and how he didn’t have to rely on violence to get himself out of scrapes.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Stephen Downing retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in 1980 after more than 20 years of service. He rose to the title of Captain of Detectives, and he established homicide investigation techniques that continue to be used to this day. He was a Commanding Officer of the Juvenile Division and then the Commanding Officer of the Southwest Area where he designed and implemented the first functionally integrated police operation in law enforcement dealing with gang activity.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Stephen Downing’s son, Michael P. Downing has also served as an LAPD Deputy Chief, and served as the Commanding Officer of Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations, becoming the interim Chief of Police after Chief William J. Bratton stepped down in 2009.

However, it was a year earlier in 1986, in the second-season episode 3 titled, “Twice Stung” that the character of Joanne Remmings (played by Pamela Bowen) used the term. Later on in an episode of “Stargate SG-1” the character of Samantha Carter (played by Amanda Tapping) used the term.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Richard Dean Anderson played the role of Colonel Jack O’Neill in “Stargate SG-1” which aired on 27 July 1997. The series was a spin-off from the movie “Stargate.”

There was a MacGyver reboot (23 September 2016 to 30 April 2021) that ran for four seasons which starred American actor, model, and producer Lucas Till in the role of Angus MacGyver. As you can well imagine, the MacGyverisms continued.

And so Idiomation has pegged the term to 1986 and episode 3 of MacGyver as the source of the term. The next time someone says you’re guilty of a MacGyverism, smile. You’re being compared to a genius-level who adapts well to unexpected situations.

Weaponized Incompetence

Weaponized incompetence — also known as strategic incompetence or skilled incompetence — happens when someone does a task so poorly that one or more people take over and do the task for that person even when the person either knows how to do the task or could learn to do the task for himself/herself/themselves. It usually happens in relationships where one partner purposely does a task so poorly or claims to be unable to do the task as a way to force the other partner to take sole responsibility for the task. It’s a skilled way of avoiding what the individual believes is an undesirable task for them to do by demonstrating an unarguable inability to do said task.

Some claim it is a sexist behavior however males and females have shown both genders are quite adept at weaponized incompetence when they choose to default to the behavior in order to escape shouldering the responsibility of doing the task in the first place.

It happens when a male does the dishes so poorly that the female has to re-wash the dishes before serving food on those dishes.

It happens when a female claims she can’t follow a map or GPS directions to ensure the vehicle in which they are traveling will arrive at its intended destination forcing the driver (or another passenger) to take over the task of reading the directions on the map or the GPS.

It happens when a co-worker half-heartedly does their assigned task on a group project and leaves everyone else to take up the slack so the project is completed in a timely fashion and is done according to set standards.

How do you know if weaponized incompetence may be at play? When one or more people, exasperated with the poor performance of the person slacking off says, “I’ll do it for you” and the person slacking off is not only excused from all duties and responsibilities, but also absolved from any negative fall-out over how the project was completed, that person has successfully pulled off weaponized incompetence.

Like learned helplessness, weaponized incompetence is a learned behavior which can be unlearned.

Many claim that the expression first came to light in 2006 however weaponized incompetence is part of the cycle of gaslighting according to psychotherapists and psychiatrists.

In August 2008, university professor Carl Dyke wrote about strategic incompetence on the Dead Voles blog. At the time, he was teaching three courses of introductory world history as well as an upper-division seminar in World History since 1945. Carl Dyke had the following to say about this behavior:

Strategic incompetence is the art of making yourself more trouble than you’re worth in some area of unwelcome effort. This can involve being a painfully slow learner, a bumbler, or an impediment. In each case the objective is to make it easier for someone else to step in and do the work than to leave it to you. Arguably a species of passive aggression, although shading off into mere passivity or genuine incompetence.

Far from lacking in ability, those who successfully practice weaponized or strategic incompetence are also masters of expectations management and oftentimes project toxic niceness while feigning incompetence.

But long before it was called weaponized incompetence, and long before it was called strategic incompetence, back in 1986, business schools referred to this behavior as skilled incompetence. In the article “Skilled Incompetence” written by Chris Agyris (16 July 1923 – 16 November 2013) for The Magazine published by the Harvard Business Review in September 1986, he described in detail how this happened in large businesses. He described premeditated incompetence that was set up by the individual to avoid being responsible for completing a task they did not want to be responsible for completing.

It appears that while weaponized incompetence may have first appeared in 2006 as reported by a few websites, strategic incompetence was around a decade before that, and skilled incompetence was around a decade before that.

Idiomation understands that faked incompetence has been around for centuries — especially where passing the buck is possible — but the specific terms go back to 2006, 1996, and 1986 respectively.

In A New York Minute

People believe that everything happens more quickly in New York City than anywhere else in the world and so it makes sense to hear the phrase “in a New York minute” and to expect it’s going to be faster than any other minutes.

Maybe it’s because there’s so many things to do in New York City what with Broadway shows, music in parks and on streets as well as in restaurants with city views and sidewalk cafés, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, the Chelsea Piers, South Street Seaport, the Empire State Building, Little Italy, Little Brazil, Central Park, horse-drawn carriages, Park Ave, Fashion Ave, Battery Park, Wall Street, the Village, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square and more.

In the Spartanburg (SC) Herald Journal edition of October 20, 1986, page 3 has an article that states:

“Welcome to Houston,” wrote Forbes magazine in 1983, “where lizard-skin boots go with pin stripes, and business is done quicker than a New York minute.”

The phrase — evidently a Southernism used with particular frequency in Texas — was given further national currency as the title of a song by Ronnie McDowell that made the country music top 40 in 1985.

On September 14, 1985 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on court proceedings in its story “Immunity Johnson’s Toughest Decision.” The story dealt with the case of Philadelphia caterer Curtis Strong who was charged with 16 counts of selling cocaine to players in Pittsburgh between 1980 and 1984.  The paper reported in part:

[U.S. Attorney J. Alan] Johnson was asked if he could charge any of the players with crimes if he learns later that any of them were selling drugs.  “Not only could I, but I’d do it in a New York minute,” he responded. 

No ball players were called to testify during the trial yesterday.  But defense attorney Adam O. Renfroe Jr. dais he believes the emphasis of the trial has shifted away from his client and that professional baseball has been put on trial.

Although it can’t be proven, it’s believed that the phrase may have something to do with a misreading  of news reports about Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh‘s tour of the country in his Spirit of St. Louis.  He and the plane arrived one minute ahead of schedule and of course, the headlines on that day in October 1927 read:

LINDBERGH ENDS NATIONAL TOUR: Lands on Mitchel Field at New York Minute Before He Is Due.

The news stories stated that the crowd cheered and jostled as the Spirit of St. Louis crossed over the field, banked, sideslipped and dipped to earth at 1:59 p.m.  The plane then taxied into a police-ringed hangar and Lindbergh, bareheaded and leather-jacketed, stepped into a car which bore him between cheering crowds to the airport’s operations office.  While the crowd outside pushed against the windows and shouted for another view of Lindbergh, he greeted newspaper men.

However, it’s also possible that the phrase draws on such historical events as the Underground Railway between Brooklyn and New York City.  On January 24, 1890 the Chicago Daily Tribune published a news article entitled, “Brooklyn To New York In A Minute.”  The story commented on Major B.S. Henning, the leading spirit in the Henning Gravity Tunnel Company and the newly formed East River Railway Company, where the details of the one-minute Brooklyn-to-New York scheme was laid out for newspapermen.