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I am going to start a series here on my blog about words (or phrases) that bug me personally. there are so many words that are overused or just idiotic in language. And it makes me grind my teeth whenever I hear them anymore.
Sure, there are clever words developed all the time…okay, maybe not all the time…but for every cute or clever words, there are dozens that are horrendous…*derisive laugh* and it is is usually the horrendous ones that are overused.
I do not know why some words are created to for something that is better covered by the former description. every generation has to leave their mark somehow…but as each generation creates new words or phrases, the beauty of language is getting lost…and this is from a woman/writer (me of course LOL) who believes that the human language is woefully inadequate…that there is no way to truly express the emotions or beauty in language. Think of this…we have gone from where language in of itself was poetic. that the phrasing of even the simplest of things would roll off the tongue. some called it superfluous, and since started to “simplify” language, yet the “simplification” of language has become very unromantic, brief, and in some cases, even ugly. I am not talking about specific dialects, but of language as a whole. in the simplification of language, we have lost the beauty that words themselves once had. We have taken something that once would have taken several beats to say, down to abbreviating it to letters.
For example; text talk. (which is another peeve I will discuss in a later blog). It works fine for messaging on the phone, and even in games…sometimes in online writing such as blogs or chat rooms…it becomes totally different when it is spoken in regular conversations.
And we wonder why languages are so hard to learn, especially English.
I tend to get stuck on phrases in my writing that I notice I use just a little too much…and I try to correct that when I catch it, and I am not the only author that does get stuck using the same word or descriptive phrase over and over again. I have read several series that are 6+ books (or more) in the series, and I can start seeing a trend from the author of the same word over and over again, both in the same book, and over the entire series. For instance, one series the author uses the word “tawny” to describe almost every male main character and sometimes even the female characters. and this series has around 20 books in it (give or take a few).
So, the word that I am about ready to kill over is the word: staycation. Everywhere I turn people, especially media, is using this word. I didn’t care for it when it first cropped up, and my hatred of it only increases whenever I hear it.
the official meaning of it from merriam-webster.com is:
Staycation (noun)
Etymology: blend of stay and vacation
"A vacation spent at home or nearby"
Staycationer
What happened to the good old-fashioned “day trip” or “sunday drive”? Why staycation? Even if you go elsewhere in your state for a few days, it is still a vacation, yet this word is used to describe virtually anything except a trip via plane and the such.I can understand a car trip across a state as a vacation as well…but it is still not a staycation.
Hellooooo. I would love to shout out to everyone who uses this word the eliminate it from their vocabulary. *nashes teeth* In my opinion, it is a word that neeeveeeerrrr should have been created.
I will scream and run from the room if I ever begin to read that word in a book LOL. (see, there is that danged text talk again.)
