LEND ME YOUR EAR: BUZZING AROUND WITH CAPS AND `FRANKENFOOD'

Ever notice how words in common usage suddenly become special buzz words?

At this writing, "cap" is buzzing at top speed throughout the land. Millionaire baseball icons are refusing to play ball because team owners want to put a cap on their salaries. Everyone in the country is demanding a cap on government waste and spending. President Clinton and Congress are trying to outcap each other in every area of what is best for the country -- putting caps on each other's caps.

When I was a child, a cap was a close-fitting cover for the head -- a toboggan for a youngster's head, a cloche for the mother, a cap called a cap for the gardener. Today, anti-cap baseball strikers are nonetheless wearing their identity caps. A cap is in the same class with a T-shirt. Often it represents what the wearer belongs to or believes in. There seems to be no end to what this three-letter word can mean. Eons ago, my mother was fond of saying, of anything that shocked or amused her, "Well, if that doesn't cap the climax!" But currently, "cap" is in a revival mode, the purpose of which is to put a cap on whatever costs too much or is wrong with society.

How many meanings do we have for "trigger"? In a letter to the Missourian about the way the government can manipulate the English language to conceal their intent, Jack Faris, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, nominated "trigger" to serve as the "new buzzword of Washington rhetoric."

We were brought up to believe a trigger was the business end of a gun. Today, everyone is afraid of trigger-happy children as well as adults. At the same time, we are addicted to triggering ideas, plans, events, insults, you name it. Just don't pull the trigger on language. Our cap on grammar is only temporary.

Increasing controversy over the environment has made a buzz word of "allergy." Originally, allergies had to do with the physical effects of foods on the race of man. These days, everything that lives and breathes is affected by everything else that lives and sickens. Human beings, animals, and plants can be allergic to each other, and all suffer allergies to sounds. Married couples become allergic to marriage, others to divorce. Hosts of people vehemently voice allergies to religion, government, to almost anything that to them is morally right or wrong.

Children, according to technology nerds, are allergic to anything that requires pressure on the brain. In this writer's biased view, technology and pseudo-psychiatry have much to do with the decline of mental effort and self-help. First calculators, then computers, now movies instead of brain drain.

In our increasingly computerized world, "cyber" keeps buzzing around in newly-minted forms. We now have not only "cyberpunks", but "cypherpunks" -- children allergic to math. We also endure, in the words of one critic, "preadolescents being trained by cyberpunk culture." Another writer tops this with "cyberjunk culture." Mercifully, American parents still produce brilliant offspring who can recite the alphabet and the tables.

Inspired by "dinosaurus", a writer with a sense of humor has dreamed up "snorkasaurus." He coined the term to describe a species of lizard that swims with its snout above the water. Although it seems unlikely that "snorkasaurus" will achieve dictionary status, Barney the purple dinosaur kept all such efforts buzzing and the rest of us laughing.

In recent weeks, Woodstock 1994 hopefuls set the world abuzz with promises to re-create Woodstock 1969. A number wound up dubbing their field of dreams "Mudstock 1994." An Associated Press writer re-named the 1994 version the "Gulag Woodstock", the "Woodstockade", and "Woodgulag 17." Not yet, please God -- not yet!

For the nonce we turn to American agronomy, to our agro-scientists who are buzzing like buzzards swooping down on Italy's efforts to produce the first man-created tomato. On a recent TV special, economist Adam Smith unveiled a photo of the perfect specimen our teams plan to exhibit -- perhaps in 30 years. A marvel of color to look at, but unpredictable as to taste. A friend of the American farmer has named this new monster tomato "Frankenfood."

"Frankenfood"! Methinks I just heard a familiar voice calling to me from the Great Beyond: "Well, if that don't cap the climax!"

Never in all the 46 years I knew her did I hear my mother use "don't" for "doesn't"!