Getting a Fix on ‘Fixers’

One of the many astonishing developments, for language mavens, in the unfolding drama of the Mueller investigation has been the casual use of the term fixer. Mainstream media outlets have taken to calling Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney, Trump’s fixer. Several times, I’ve heard that Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, has replaced Cohen as Trump’s attorney and fixer.

I’d always thought of the term as more pejorative than descriptive, so I went looking. One of ...