UKC

Howard Jacobson, always thought provoking, was on Radio4 A Point of View this morning. At last someone else articulates (much better than I could) one of my pet hates. The word incredibly has become a replacement for very, or extremely. Incredible has a particular meaning which, in common with other words, is being lost, and, word by word, the language becomes impoverished.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002752n

Awesome. But you can’t push water uphill

I was on a zoom training session once with a US colleague. Nice guy but quite monotone. Each point punctuated with ‘awesome’ …about the least awesome things 😁

“Incredibly severe” does make a route sound a lot more interesting!

That is literally incredible! So random. 😭

While I'm sympathetic, especially to claims of linguistic impoverishment, in the end words mean what people want them to mean. And the social consensus on word meanings shifts over time. Expecting meanings to remain static is unrealistic, because the world changes and language is how we describe the world.

Its worth remembering that every word in every language was literally* made-up by people.

(* see what I did there?)

Yes, awesome is another.  It is another word that has become meaningless.

Don't worry, Rog. For every word that the language loses, another will pop up .

For instance, someone i  watched in a video yesterday was talking about not wanting to "unsend" a route.

How very cromulent

Well that one definitely had me googling.

Merriam Webster refers to it as a "nonce" word. so.........

At one point in the past, everything was "ace", but that became tedious, and it has for the most part, died a death.

I heard HJ's comment on Friday night, after any questions and agreed with much of it. It was also illuminating, and as you suggested, he was eloquent in his presentation.

Yes, I recently noticed how often I used to use it in stuff I wrote decades ago.  It makes me cringe now and I actively check to edit it out!

Not realy. Doesn't it mean 'good'

Not good, I think. Just satisfactory, just what you have a right to expect.

I really like A Point of View, especially some of the regulars like Will Self and Sarah Dunant... and Howard Jacobson.  He can be a bit curmudgeonly but always eloquent (at least now he's got through his 'did I mention I'm Jewish?' phase).

Isn’t the name a bit of a giveaway?

Well, quite.

Cliches was another thread.