The subtitle of this blog states that I "...love the words." And I do. I think our language with all its tricks and discrepancies is beautiful. That's why it so troublesme when excess words are created to screw it up. This morning while driving to Oneida, I saw a very nice new sign hung up by a local realtor. I'm sure he has more than one sign like that. What should we logical call those attractive items? SIGNS, of course. Not SIGNAGE. Never was there a more stupid word created. Instead of having trucks shall we have truckage. Instead of having horse shall we have horsage. We already have sauce and sausage, but they are different things completely.
Words like signage just clog up the vessels to the heart of our language. Another one that bugs me awfully is "impact" as a verb. It used to be that you felt the "impact" when another car drove into your car's rear end. And there was a very good adjective created with the addition of "-ed," as in an "impacted" wisdom tooth. But then, someone, a bureaucrat I would guess, decided that rather than be affected by stuff we had to be impacted by it. Soon "impacted" as a verb was everywhere, and, though I didn't check, I am sure it is now listed as a v.t. in the dictionary.
A couple of others that annoy me are "closure" and "paradigm." There are more, but I am too impacted by the need to go to rehearsal to create a longer list. Feel free to click on the little "comments" on the bottom of the blog and tell me words that drive you insane. Or maybe I am the only one who suffers so. I'll have to have some signage made up for my house. "Crazy man lives here."
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