I’m not a language Nazi, but …

[aadler]

The last few days, I’ve been noticing more and more language-usage things that annoy me. Few of them are new, but they’ve been coming more often. So, to list:

1. This is heard frequently in speech, but I’ve never seen it in print: “The point is, is that …” (Or ‘the problem’, or ‘the thing’, or ‘the question’, that doesn’t matter.) No. The double-‘is’ is wrong, and dumb, and never fails to grate.
2. This one was a minor point, rather than a real annoyance. The other day, I re-watched the Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes, and came to a point near the end where Watson observed, “I had a lousy doctor.” Really? I’m fairly sure that a medical man in 1800s England, or any Briton, for that matter, would use ‘lousy’ as a specific descriptive: infested with lice. Words mean things, and then the language gets degraded by the ignorant and sloppy, and the real meanings get lost.
3. Then comes another example of definitions being blurred by misuse: “We have an epidemic of obesity in this country.” No, we don’t. Obesity is not an infectiously transmissible disease. Almost none of the things currently being called epidemics actually are; they may be ‘reaching epidemic proportions’, but practically nobody ever phrases it that way.

Keep in mind, this has been just in the last day or so. And don’t even get me started on saying ‘executed’ when the proper word is ‘murdered’. (An execution is an official act. It may be unjust, it may even be illegal, but it’s official. Not like the butchery that gangsters and jihadis do, which doesn’t deserve to be graced with a quasi-legitimate label.)

I love the proper use of language. I’m just hearing less and less of it.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think the misuse of "execution" comes as a contraction of the adjective "execution-style." A lot of people don't seem to get that murdering someone in that fashion does not an actual "execution" make.

[aadler]

Yes, just as with my previous objection: “GenericIssue is reaching epidemic proportions” segues into “GenericIssue is becoming epidemic” (adjective) “in our society” and then “GenericIssue is turning into an epidemic”. The problem is that we don’t have a cadre of language purists who immediately leap on the malefactors and publicly stomp on their heads, subjecting them to searing universal ridicule and raising the obvious question, If this moron can’t even use the word right, why the HELL should we respect his opinion?

You know what really bothers me? The recognition that there must be dozens — perhaps hundreds — of equally serious infractions, of which I am equally guilty without knowing about it, simply because today’s education doesn’t teach enough for me to be aware of my error.

(Whiskey sours. They don’t expunge my vocabulary, but they do lower the inhibition filters.)