Popular culture has a way of locking onto a certain word and transforming it into a commonly

used and understood expression.

  I was was standing in line at Penn Station in New York several years ago, waiting for my turn to order some coffee and a Krispy Kreme donut. A guy came up to me and asked if I could spare any change. I reached into my pocket and pulled out all I had and gave it to him. It amounted to about 87 cents. Instead of saying “thank you,” he looked at the money and said, “When you buy your donut, do you think you might have some more change?” I guess what I gave him wasn’t enough.

  I went to our bookshelf and looked in a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus from 1962 and listed as synonyms for the word ‘enough’ were  words like adequate, sufficient, equal, ample, etc. Words that seemed to express a degree of satisfaction or contentment with what was being evaluated as enough.

  “Have some more mashed potatoes, Jed.”

  “Thanks Ma, but I’ve had enough.”

  Satisfied, happy, but not needing more, nor pushed to the limit of  being annoyed in any way. Polite.

  I then checked a ‘modern’ thesaurus on my smart phone. It had some of the same synonyms as my Roget’s Thesaurus but in addition there were entries such as: fed up, had it, tired of, enough already, last straw and up to here.

  Wait a minute. What happened to the meaning of ‘enough’ since 1962 and why? It seems that the word ‘enough’ transformed from a simple adjective to a weaponized response to whatever someone finds to be annoying.

  “You really need to finish your mashed potatoes, Jed.”

  “I said ’No Thanks,’ ENOUGH!”

  Whether the subject is potatoes or politics it appears when people have had their fill of what someone else is dishing out… well you know what they say.

  WhatEVER!