We filter stuff flowing past us, consider this material, and evaluate its worth. As here:
(#1) Neocrinus, a stalked living crinoid species similar to those found in the Paleozoic (from Brian N. Tissot’s website, “Curious Creatures of the California Coast: Crinoids”, from 12/31/13); from Wikipedia:Crinoids are marine invertebrates that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that remain attached to the sea floor by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms, called feather stars or comatulids, are members of the largest crinoid order, Comatulida. Crinoids are echinoderms in the phylum Echinodermata, which also includes the starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.
… Crinoids are passive suspension feeders, filtering plankton and small particles of detritus from the sea water flowing past them with their feather-like arms.
Oh, not crinoid, silly man; on Facebook, commenting on my posting from yesterday, “Today’s bilingual jest”, Gadi Niram seemed to think it was clitic, but that was just a joke; really, the saying is that everyone’s a critic nowadays (or some similar piece of wisdom about the prevalence of unfavorable opinions coming from all quarters).
The clitic digression. On Facebook:
— GN: Everyone’s a clitic nowadays.
— AZ > GN: Astonishingly, I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.
— GN > AZ: When it came to mind, I had the immediate thought that I couldn’t have been the first to think of it.
— AZ > GN: I know this will be hard for you to accept, but the percentage of the population that has ever heard about clitics is so small as to be negligible. Clits / clitorises yes, clitics no. And a moment’s reflection should convince you that this state of common knowledge is both just and right. You and I thrill to the details of Auxiliary Reduction in English and the organization of Tagalog clitic clusters, but you surely understand that this appreciation is roughly on a par with savoring the team stats for the Philadelphia Phillies in their remarkable 1976 season or enjoying the challenges of taxonomizing turtles and tortoises. (There are real people who have done each of these things, and that’s wonderful, but their numbers are tiny. The market for clitology might be as large as a thousand people — could ten thousand be possible? — but in a world of roughly 8 billion people, that’s beyond minuscule. )
Critics. Third try is the charm. Two senses of the noun critic: judging vs. condemning (with the second sometimes developing out of the first). From NOAD:
[the expert judge] a person who judges the merits of literary, artistic, or musical works, especially one who does so professionally: a film critic. [AZ: such critics are often enthusiastic exponents of certain artists, genres, or works; sometimes they have acid tongues]
[the negatively opinionated] a person who expresses an unfavorable opinion of something: critics say many schools are not prepared to handle the influx of foreign students.
The common saying (or stock expression) Everyone’s a critic nowadays (and its variants, some of them about the state of the world, some about the recent state of the world) is about the (distressing) ubiquity of the second type of critic.
The saying, which packages a common thought succinctly, but not with striking imagery or colorful wording, has a fairly fixed form (so it gets used for book titles, movie titles, lines in songs, what have you), but no traceable origin, since it’s a good, but commonplace, idea. But it’s useful, eminently useful.
And so there’s a entire book devoted to illustrations of the saying as it applies in many different contexts — the delightful Everyone’s a Critic: The Ultimate Cartoon Book (cartoons by the world’s greatest cartoonists celebrate the art of critique), edited by Bob Eckstein (2020):
(#2) With a Danny Shanahan dog-critic cartoon on the cover, and this publisher’s blurb:We are all critics now. From social media “likes” to reviews on Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, we’re constantly asked to give our opinion and offer feedback. Everyone’s a Critic is a curated collection of the best and brightest New Yorker cartoonists celebrating the art of the drawn critique, whether about restaurants, art, sports, dates, friends, or modern life. Featuring the work of thirty-six masters of the cartoon, including Roz Chast, Sam Gross, Nick Downes, Liza Donnelly, Bob Mankoff, Michael Maslin, and Mick Stevens, over half the cartoons in this book appear in print for the first time.
Plus, inside, this Nick Downes cartoon with “Everyone’s a critic” as the caption:
(#3) Yet another canine critic
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