Civilization crumbles a little bit almost every time I turn on the television, and a single word-and-punctuation-mark combination is inflicting the damage.


You’ve heard it too, no doubt, and if you’re a person who values grace and urbanity and eating with utensils rather than burying your face in the plate, you’ve winced whenever some TV character has spewed it. It’s the snarky “Really?,” and it’s undoing 2,000 years’ worth of human progress.


I’m not talking about “Really?” as a request for more information or an expression of surprise. I’m referring to the more recent, faddish use of it: delivered with a high-pitched sneer to indicate a contempt so complete that it requires no clarification.


Say a co-worker shows up for a pivotal meeting wearing a plaid blouse and a polka-dot skirt. In the old days you might have said: “Well, that is certainly an interesting fashion choice. Myself, I prefer something more subdued when sitting down with a client.” Now, though, if you’ve succumbed to the loathsome trend, you will simply aim as withering a look as you can at your colleague, say “Really?” and walk away.


This irksome use has been turning up on television with a frequency that suggests that a scriptwriters’ union has trademarked it and is receiving royalties, even though its moment passed several years ago. We know that “Really?” has jumped the shark because America’s leading satire factories have been disrespecting it for years. “Saturday Night Live” had the “Really!?! With Seth and Amy” skits, in which Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler beat the word to death as a means of mocking celebrity blunders and such. On “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” John Oliver, especially, has pioneered the extremely difficult Reverse “Really?,” in which he belittles a sane and reasoned stance taken by Mr. Stewart with a “Really?” when Mr. Oliver’s own view is the ludicrous one.


And yet the scriptwriters keep trotting out the word as if it were something fresh and original. When a character does something stupid or says something inappropriate or expresses an opinion another character dislikes, a “Really?” can’t be far behind.


Guys use it when shooting the breeze. Pete, for instance, tossed a “Really?” at the boorish Andre in an episode of the FX comedy “The League” last October after Andre delivered a critique of a woman by speculating that she had a retrograde uterus.


But guys probably can’t be held to a high standard of discourse. More alarming is that “Really?” has crept into our finest medical establishments. When a monkey rode a motorized toy ambulance through a veterinary hospital in the pilot of NBC’s “Animal Practice,” Dorothy, the hospital’s new owner, looked on aghast and then said the vile word to the doctor who was presiding over the chaos.


Big business, too, has been infested. The pilot of Showtime’s “House of Lies” last winter wasn’t four minutes old when Don Cheadle’s character, a high-priced consultant, spat a “Really?” at his father after Dad had criticized his child-rearing skills.


The military too. Last week’s premiere of ABC’s “Last Resort” had barely begun before a high-ranking officer threw a “Really?” at two subordinates who were goofing around. No wonder the whole submarine is now in the middle of a nuclear crisis.


And, yes, the plague has reached the highest levels of government. In the season finale of the HBO comedy “Veep” in June, what did Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Selina, the vice president of the United States, say to a staff member who had prematurely sent out a news release about his own promotion? “Really?” John C. Calhoun and who knows how many other oratorically inclined former vice presidents turned over in their graves.


People repeat what they hear on TV, and so “Really?” keeps spreading in everyday life. And since everyday life is now patterned after the fake everyday life of reality TV, a vicious cycle has asserted itself. Just a few weeks ago the coach on “Cheer,” a new CMT reality series about a teenage cheerleading squad, fired not one, not two, but three “Reallys?” at the girls after a botched move in practice. Scripted TV influences reality TV influences real life; repeat endlessly.


I could successfully argue that the “Really?” epidemic on scripted shows is lazy writing; why do the hard work of spinning meaningful dialogue when you can grab a cheap laugh with a single word? But I’m more concerned about the role these TV “Reallys?” are playing in the continuing collapse of society.