August 11, 2008
Dear Clusterflock: This is preying on my mind.
What words might you use on a regular basis, in the way you use them, that have become unglued from their original etymology?
Today, I caught myself using the word terrific! to close phone conversations with clients, vendors and employees alike. I use the word all the time! I use it in lieu of “great” or “fantastic” or “perfect!” (Likely, none of which I use for their intended purpose either.)
The use of words, and their original purposes, has been on my mind a little while, so when I had opportunity to comment on Brandon Hobson’s post on August 8, I first wrote “terrifying” but in a moment of realization, I recognized terrific for what it is. The comment takes on a darker color, yes? Honestly! What have I been saying to clients, vendors and employees alike?
Please note, dear angel who watches after me and usually “categorizes” my posts, I made an attempt, this time, to do it myself.
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14 Responses to “Dear Clusterflock: This is preying on my mind.”
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This is a good one, Rick. It will take some thinking.
What about “awful”? I remember being very perplexed at discovering the definition of “awe” and how it did not hold up to tacking a “full” on the end of it. At least, not anymore.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-awful.html
(Sorry, I don’t know how to embed links in comments. I only fake being computer literate. Almost as well as I fake other things. a-HEM.)
Hmm, nice post, Rick. Yes, some thinking…
This post is awesome – which is to say that it inspires awe.
Great post, Rick. The trouble I’m having is that we are all word people here and tend to reach for accuracy unless we are deliberately appropriating words such as ” shunt” for its connotative qualities. Or crepuscular (which is not to say that accuracy has been sacrificed here on Cluster!). My first impulse was to mention words that are commonly mentioned in this realm: moot means debatable: deplorable means lamentable; anxious means apprehensive rather than eager; and so on. But then there are those cases that go beyond the whole accuracy thing. “Cooch Behar” is a state in India , for instance–but Cooch is enough, I think, for some purposes. I have also found myself using the word “fistula” to refer to certain vacuous persons.
But an oblique reference that comes to mind is this: once when I was about eight, in church with my sister and my parents and longing for freedom, a scragly boy next to me on the pew leaned over and told me that “bosom” meant “tits.” I was instantly delighted by this and have been since.
the word I can’t stop thinking about is very simple but it seems to negate everything that comes before it.
Here’s an example, taken out of context from one of my own comments:
And: Mine’s back up now, but it is still sucking the same suck song as over the past sucky months.
I like but, but I love butt.
Deron thought butt.
I’m going to stick with “awesome.” That’s my word that’s come unglued. Well – that and “gay” – butt I don’t know if I want to touch that can of cooch this early.
I can’t stop reading your name as Nick Reece, and THAT is preying on my mind.
andrea, happens all the time.
I’m being tangental, but a long time ago Donald Hall pointed out to me (in critiquing a poem) that I had misused a word in the same way it is habitually misused in sloppy American discourse, and that word is decimate. As the root should clearly indicate, it is related to the Latin word for ten, and it is a Latin term (which I should have known since I studied Roman history) which means to kill one in ten. A unit of the army, for example, might have one in ten of its soldiers executed as a punishment for some offense. We, of course, use it to mean almost annihilate, which is virtually a reversal of its intensity.
If Wikipedia is to be trusted, “decimate” has also been taken to mean “reduce to one-tenth” since at least 1788.
It’s not a problem confined to the Americas, either: the majority of its usage in Britain is the more debatable “annihilated” meaning, as well.