MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Thu, 06 Jul 2006

... and "Depends" is a noun. What's the world coming to? Guess I'd better go trim my unibrow!

AP - Need tips on how to groom a unibrow or soul patch? Just Google it. Or get a mouse potato to do it for you. If you're still lost, grab the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for a definition of those and about 100 other words that have made their way into its pages.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

/Humor | 5 writebacks | permanent link

On 7/6/2006 17:50:25
Bjorngrímnir wrote

It's Evolution, Man

The evolution of the human experience, thousands upon thousands of years in the making, drives along with it the evolution of our ability to accurately describe and relate important concepts to one another. It was, at one time, a major triumph of humanity when Urg could say to Mphf, "Bear! Behind you!" We have risen above this primal triumph, and can now eloquently formulate descriptions of how Mphf and Urg might best preen their substantial and undivided brows. Okay, 'we' is a pretty broad term...but current presidents aside, I'm proud to be witness to the age of information - of any and all kinds - literally at our fingertips :)

On 7/6/2006 18:45:54
SB wrote

Neologisms don't belong in the dictionary. That's why we have things like urbandictionary.com and wikipedia. The dictionary, to which we send our children when we wish to ensmarten them, should stick to those words that won't get you laughed out of your English class. Funny thing about proper names becoming verbs, to Xerox something means to make a copy on any type of machine, but to Google something means specifically to use Google and not any other search engine.

On 7/6/2006 22:06:21
Dave H wrote

Maybe I'm just old

but I still depend on those 100 zeros to make a googol. And I still spell it correctly, too, even when searching the Internet. If I spelled it like this new-fangled dictionary does, I'd have to prefix it with 'Barney', cause it's a proper name! And I'd wonder where Snuffy was! I'm especially careful about my language when sipping a pop, daubing my nose with a tissue, or even running to the copier! But then again, I'm just old.... Thanks for the comments, and Be well, Dave H.

On 7/7/2006 07:27:50
Arwin wrote

Corporate Speak

How about the noun transition as a verb? As in, "I'm transitioning to a new assignment." Or as in, "The output transitioned from 1 to 0." These examples do a sufficient job of communicating, but how about using a perfectly good verb... "change" instead of making transition a verb. The language faux pas that bug me the most are those that are designed to make the speaker seem more corporate or smarter, when ironically they may make the speaker seem more corporate, but they don't (IMHO) make the speaker seem smarter. There should be a dictionary for corporate America to define all the words used properly or improperly designed to make the speaker more corporate. Another perfectly good word, impact, seems to be getting overused lately. Nothing happens in the news without someone or something being "impacted". When I hear the word impacted I instantly think about wisdom teeth or my dogs anal glands.

On 7/7/2006 09:49:40
Bjorngrímnir wrote

Hah! And to think what might go through the minds of many when discussing impacted anal glands on a dog! I think the problem with corporate-speak isn't so much that there is a lack of dictionaries. The problem has more to do with trends - everything, including language, revolves around the latest trend in the corporate world. So when the boss comes in from a weekend trip, where he picked up some nonsensical word usage (like 'transitioning'), people in the office will tend to start mimicking him. What I think is really sad is that smaller companies, anxious to emulate a perceived successful corporate environment, will sometimes adopt their own idea of what corporate-speak is. I saw this happen in Missouri, where the average grasp of intelligible English is tenuous at best, and I thought it was pretty sad. Sadder still because I worked for that company for a short time. Even sadder, because it was a small chain of now-defunct computer repair stores. Tragic, because like the management skills of the owners, I'm pretty certain their English was of the self-taught variety.

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
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