During our phone conversation, Dr. Doyle peppered his sentences with a lot of “sort ofs,” as in: “My approach on these things is sort of, what are the sort of factors that encourage people to use this?” He was conscious of doing so, and said his “sort of” rate increased when presenting new ideas or speaking to large crowds — say, at a conference.

“You don’t want to be overly confident in these high-stakes arenas,” he said.

In this sense, “sort of” addresses another modern concern, because not a week goes by that someone isn’t publicly embarrassed or shamed over ill-considered words they tweeted or were caught saying on video. Daily conversation has become a high-stakes arena, for celebrities as well as normal citizens.

The awareness that offhand utterances can live forever online and have serious consequences has made for overly cautious speech. So we hear the “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd say to a reporter that he “sort of laughed” after reading an article on Benghazi in a conservative newspaper. Or Joe Neumaier, a writer for The New York Daily News, who as a film critic is paid to offer sharp opinions about Hollywood, assert about Robin Williams that “you sort of don’t think of him as a sort of character actor.”

Using “sort of” to reduce the risk of making an error or causing offense is a tactic an editor friend calls “strategic softening.” (Note to Alec Baldwin: insert “sort of” in your next tirade and you won’t have to make a public apology.)

As much as it can create rhetorical wiggle room and be a tool for nuanced thinking about a complex world, the “fuzzy kinda-sorta,” as Mr. Safire called it back in 1995, can also make for wishy-washy and obsequious speech that lacks clarity, confidence and authority. Especially when used frequently and to qualify banal utterances and basic facts.

The other day I was listening to NPR and heard Nicolas Retsinas, a Harvard Business School professor, mention that his daughter had “kind of moved back to the East Coast” from Alaska.

I doubt Mr. Retsinas was aware of saying “kind of.” It’s become a verbal tic, a filler phrase. I’ve deployed both “sort of” and “kind of” myself, many times. In this very newspaper, I once described the view from a Detroit rooftop as possessing “a sort of grandeur.” Strunk and White would not approve.