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May 09, 2007
On Words
Lately I've been feeling that we as a society are misusing our language to the point where many words are losing their impact. These "big" words are used to describe such mundane things, or are used so often, that they lose their power. Here's a few that I see abused a lot:
GIGANTIC/ENORMOUS/HUGE: We see these words used to describe everything from a used car lot to "huge savings" on an item that really only adds up to a few dollars.
TRAGEDY: The news stations love this word. Everything's a tragedy. Now, I agree that the VA Tech shooting was a tragedy, but Sanjaya being voted off American Idol was certainly not.
FAIR: I hate this word. It gets used a lot in arguments. "That just isn't fair". Guess what, life isn't fair! It's never been fair. It'll never be fair. Besides, what's fair and what's not is entirely subjective. To the rabbit being eaten by the eagle, life's not fair. From the eagle's point of view life is wonderful. Unless of course he'd rather have had squirrel.
EMERGENCY: A friend of my wife's recently said she had a shopping "emergency". What she meant was that she felt an urgent need to go shopping because shopping makes her feel better. I've seen real emergencies, and they involve dead and horribly maimed people.
GINORMOUS: A cross between Gigantic and Enormous. Created because the other two words got over used, this word has now been so over used that it has no meaning either.
There are others, of course, but these are the ones that really bug me. A broad grasp of the English language is a fine thing to posess. It allows us to more effectively communicate and say what we mean without using the same over used words.
Posted by at May 9, 2007 10:01 AM
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Comments
You forgot "Guesstimation" A combination of Guess and Estimate, which is really all a guess is anyway. Every time I hear this word it makes me want to throw up. At first I only heard it uttered by brainless high- and middle-schoolers but now I hear otherwise perfectly normal intelligent adults use it.
Oh, and Shocking. Everything is shocking. Bush got re-elected? Shocking! Hillary running for President? Shocking! I just soiled myself! Shocking! If you want shocking go pee on a three phase electric fence. Of all the words that need to be stricken from the English language for a period of time to allow it to cool off and fall out of favor this is the one. I hear anything headed off by "We come to you with this shocking news," and I automaticaly switch the channel to something else.
Posted by: Cris at May 10, 2007 09:28 PM