For a long time now, I have been doing my level-best to avoid using the word “Technically” in discussion.

In the way I most often hear it, “Technically” is used like so: “Although considered a vegetable, tomato is technically a fruit.”, “Technically, there are four states of matter”, “Technically, Pluto is not a planet.”, etc.

This is the usage of the word “technically” as intending to mean “precisely”, “strictly”, or “in truth”. While, on occasion, this is used when the speaker is intending to clarify something, it is also often used as an interjection to another party. It is in this sense which I abhor the usage of the word.

Apart from obviously being annoying, this turn of phrase bothers me so much because it is, as an oratory manouevre, shunting the responsibility of truth onto some aetherial yet inscrutable party. If someone says that there are technically four states of matter, you cannot engage any further with them. They are saying that there is, in some precise sense, four states of matter, but they do not take on the responsibility to define in exactly which “precise sense” their statement holds, nor do they take on the responsibility of defending that position.

In this usage, the speaker appeals to a sense of objectivity; unaware that, having created an inscrutible argument, they have created a meaningless one.

Moreover, the sense in which something is technically true is often irrelevant. In this case the technicality is only drawn so that the speaker might pretend they have something of note to say. If, in a secondary school chemistry class, a pupil pipes up with “actually, there are four states of matter”, it is unlikely that they cognizant that there really are only three states of matter within the theory of classical thermodynamics. The pupil gets to believe that they are very clever, having added nothing to the lesson.

I chose the examples above to be potentially silly anecdotes which most people will have heard someone say before, but the cause for my upset with the word comes with more sinister usecases. Take “Technically not genocide”, “Technically not colonialism”, “Technically not abuse”, “Technically not a weapon”, etc. There is no lie which cannot be projected onto a technical truth, once you pick the correct precise sense. Having done so, your defense is so nebulous that it is inpenetrable.