It can’t be new *and* improved

Walking across campus the other day, a new poster outside the Henry Art Gallery caught my eye:

While the design choices made in the piece are debatable  (I don't think the white text pops enough from the light-colored background, but that's just me), one thing is certain: nothing can be both "new" and "improved!"

• New: "original and of a kind not seen before"
• Improved: "something that has been made better; enhanced"

So if it's improved, by definition it cannot be new. "Improved" requires something to have existed in an earlier version. "New" means it has no predecessor.

This oxymoron is king among all verbal paradoxes. "Jumbo shrimp?" Okay, sure; some shrimp are bigger than others. "Military intelligence?" as an oxymoron is really more of a political viewpoint than a semantic truth. But "new and improved" is unarguably wrong, yet it's used all over the place. I hope one day the term disappears from common usage, discarded into the bin of inappropriate sayings alongside "irregardless" and "oriental."

You'd think that an art gallery on a university campus would know better.

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