Word Watch: Eclectic
Derived from eklektikos, eclectic users ought to apply it selectively—just as the Greeks intended
‘I’ve always wanted to do an eclectic mix of work and Corrie [Coronation Street] is very different to what I did before.’ Actor Craig Gazey, March 2023
A classic case of using a grand term when a simple one is preferable and more accurate. For a start, eclectic, deriving from the Greek eklektikos, ‘selective’, means ‘mixed’ or ‘taken from different sources’. So to use it in conjunction with the word ‘mix’ is tautological. But it can qualify the notion of mixing, implying the use of ideas, originally specifically philosophical ideas, derived from different schools of thought or ways of thinking.
Perhaps Craig Gazey wished us to think that he intended his work as an actor to involve deep and varied cultural references: Sophocles, Plautus, Medieval Mystery Plays, Racine, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, Pirandello, Orton…? A perfectly legitimate ambition for any actor and surely preferable to sticking to a single soap opera. But looking again I see that I misread his statement: the soap opera is the change, the novelty, ‘very different’.
Acting in a repertory company always seemed to me an ideal theatrical career. Notoriously hard work, with a change of play every week, probably, but getting to know a new piece, and know it well, at such a rate must be intensely challenging and rewarding. Being condemned to perform in Coronation Street for months, if not years, might be slightly less so, but no doubt also a highly disciplined method of earning a living. However, it strikes me as being the very opposite of an eclectic career.
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