These days, those words get tossed around like peanuts at a ballpark. Legendary status used to be the domain of folk heroes such as Paul Bunyan or nascent blues great Robert Johnson.

Nowadays, a legend is someone who's been around for a long time or someone or something no longer with us whom people still talk about.

Hence, local blues fixture W.C. Clark is a legend.

The Black Cat Lounge is a legendary live music club. I've even seen James McMurtry described as a legend, which makes as much sense as putting Britney Spears on the cover of Parenting magazine. You have to earn it. There are only a handful of people still living who could correctly be called legends.

A genius used to describe an Albert Einstein, a Thomas Edison; someone of supernatural intellect who was able to change the world with their mind and vision.

In 2007, a genius is a baseball manager who tugs his ear to call a hit and run at the right time or a TV producer with three shows on the air or a hip-hop producer who knows which bass lines to steal.

Everything is 'genius' these days; if they did truly modernise the dictionary, as to the way words are really used, 'genius' would mean anything that took some thought.

And then there's the word 'icon', which used to designate an important and enduring symbol - an idol - but it has been so watered down that it's often handed out to just about anyone of note. Isaac Mizrahi is a fashion icon. Bob Costas is a sports TV icon. Lindsay Lohan is a pop culture icon. That guy who glues little figurines to the roof of his cab is a local transportation icon.

There are almost more legendary iconic geniuses out there as there are former reality show cast members.

It's time to take back what were once three of the most powerful words one could attach to another. We can't let 'legend', 'genius' and 'icon' become rendered as meaningless as 'excellent' and 'awesome' have in recent years.

Let's restore them to their former glory and return to when a legend was a legend, a genius was a genius and an icon was not just something you clicked on.

Michael Corocran writes for the Austin American-Statesman.

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