Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Fashion words and other BS*
It is just me or is anyone else getting sick of the trend in the past few years of certain words and phrases suddenly becoming "fashionable" ? Terms and expressions that you rarely or never hear used, suddenly crop up in every newspaper article, newscast and commentary you hear. I'm talking about nonsense like the phrase "went missing" all of a sudden showing up everyplace. Went missing? Huh? Not that long ago, you never heard that someone or something "went missing." It's a stupid expression. It is particularly dumb when applied to situations like abducted children. "A 5 year old went missing in Boston today, story at eleven...". Makes it sound intentional on the part of the kid. Dumb. Another one is the word "busted." Not an unusual word, but sounds pretty silly in a newscast. As in "... the holdup was in progress when two police officers busted in on the scene..." We actually heard something near that exact phrase on a TV news report. I have heard "busted" used on one of the local TV stations late newscast maybe a dozen times in the last few months. Makes the newscasters sound stupid. A few others from the past year or two are "hubris", "gravitas" and "jingoistic." How about "paradigm?" Now I'm not at all opposed to using good words, I sort of enjoy it actually. What bugs me it that somebody, someplace says something once and suddenly it appears everywhere. What a bunch of sheep. Baaaaaaaa.

This got into my head today while walking through the shop at work. Someones radio was blasting and the DJ was talking about some band that was not so well known in the US, but was "GINORMOUS" in Europe. This is the king of stupid words, so far as I am concerned. A melding of gigantic and enormous, this word was recently added to the dictionary as an official, non-slang member of the English language. One of my friends here uses that word from time to time, and it makes me wince and want to punch his head.

It gives me a ginormous headache and makes me want to go missing.


*BS = Baloney Slices. This is a family-friendly blog after all. And speaking of deli meats, I just had a toasted salami and cheddar on Syrian bread for lunch. Yummy. Amazing how the simple application of heat transforms an elegantly simple sandwich into the zenith of gooey, cheesy, spicy, goodness, much greater than the sum of its parts.
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 4:14 PM
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