Words, Words

Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, New York: Simon & Schuster (2007) at 77:

Hoover could seem as if he were addressing strangers even in a room full of friends. He talked endlessly about “confidence” but couldn’t seem to exude it. Because most earlier economic collapses in American history had been labeled “panics,” Hoove thought it would help to call this one something less inflammatory. In late 1929, he settled on the word “depression,” which immediately took on a much graver connotation.