So, precisely one month ago, I landed a new job. It was a position for which I was overqualified and would be underpaid, but that I took because of the measurable societal benefit. On the second morning of work, my boss, a youngish woman said in response to one of my task-related questions, "We are going to have a meeting at one (o'clock) and then we'll conversate some more." We'll do what? Do you mean converse? Oh, right, that's a brand of sneaker.
I quit that job after five days. No amount of scare tactics would work. You are lucky to even have a job in this economy, there is a 15% unemployment rate in the county. What about the holidays? You need money for gifts for the kids!
For many reasons including being too far from home and discovering, only after being hired, that I would be responsible for educating volunteers 2 nights a week, 2 months out of the year for 3 additional hours, on top of my regular work day without comp-time or extra pay, I also realized that my boss, with the same amount of education as I, was a solecist who implacably chipped away at my duty to feign respect for her position of authority.
Aside from bringing up negative feelings that made me wonder how in the Hell this woman could possibly be anyone's boss, it also had the opposite effect- I am going to conjure up my own list of bullshit words! Feel free to add to the list, but here is what I have so far:
1. Deprivate
2. Condemnate
3. Reasonified
4. Agreeance
5. Confirmate
6. Economified
7. Vocabulate and Vocabulize
8. Informate
9. Computate
10. Illumified
11. Confrontated
12. Romantical
13. Stupidify
14. Embarrassful
15. Referented
16. Aks
16. Aks
Hit me with some goodies and soon you, too, can be the arbiter elegantiarum, perpetuating and mocking the fine art of grammar.
I see you have a lot of pent up frustration now that you don't have W to pick on anymore. ;-p
ReplyDeleteMy dear older brother has substituted the word "ideal" for the word "idea" his entire life. He still does it in all social and professional contexts.
You must have known you were being an arbiter elegantarium with all them high falutin werds hyperlinked. I only knew 1/5 of them in advance.
You ain't never gonna illumify me, honey. I's gonna hold my knees together.
ReplyDeleteI can "feel" for ya, Gaby! I used to live in Detroit... I worked among them!! Here is one of my all-time favorite "quotes" regarding our language... I memorized it back when I was very young... in my 20s ... :)~
ReplyDeleteTo Whom It May Concern:
"In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or in articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, coalescent consistency and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affections. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and voracious veracity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity and ventriloquial verbosity. Shun double entendres, prurient jocosity and pestiferous profanity, obscure or apparent.
In other words: talk plainly, briefly, simply, purely, truthfully, sensibly, to the point, say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't put on airs, keep from slang and -- above all -- DON'T USE BIG WORDS!
Me ain't got no grammer. both of em be dyed.
ReplyDelete