I think some people confuse knowing a seemingly endless number of ways to refer to the same thing with true intelligence. An idiot who buys himself a thesaurus isn’t going to sound smart if there is still no substance behind the words. Words are a tool for communicating, and to purposely use words that make it difficult to be understood is simply counter productive, unless you consider all manner of speech to be merely an exercise to make yourself feel superior.
Yeah. What WaterJ2 said. And also those people who turn dissatisfaction with their numbing paucity of lexical dexterity toward those who take the time to learn to adequately express themselves. Make way for the cortical lacunae! Make way!
MADD for Bush!
I confess, I am a seven-crosser, and I use dots between phone numbers. This is a result of learning calligraphy (for fun) years ago. Calligraphy helped me to write far more legibly. Therefore, I see no reason to change any of the habits I cultivated when I learned Calligraphy.
And yes Ike, it does feel so Continental! Mwahahaahha!
I have a co-worker who cannot stand that I use dots or dashes between numbers. (Like in writing dates: 1-5-01 or 1.5.01) She has to go and ADD SLASHES to my written dates, when I log in on some work form. (She changes them look like this: 1/5/01.) I daresay she has some serious control issues, huh?
water: DNFTT
good advice from Yosemite, there water. See that you take it.
I’ve read the thread, and I realized that I’m guilty of every single freaking one of these things.
Well, except for the answering machine message detailed by Shirly Ujest. My OGM, for the longest time was “You have reached the Society for the Molecularly Disadvantaged. Our office is closed right now. If you have experienced loss of covalent integrity, please call our emergency hotline. Otherwise, leave a message and we’ll call you back as soon as we can.”
Yep. Intelligence is measured entirely by the extent of one’s vocabulary. You’re a smarter man than I bacause I was under the mistaken impression that a lacuna was a tear duct when I read it first. I bow before your superior “lexical dexterity”. Really, that is the one and only skill people should be measured on. Who cares what you’re saying, as long as you use words that people don’t understand.
But then again, I wrote this post entirely without orotund circumlocution, so who am I to say. I’ll be in the corner engaging in omphaloskepsis, which is really all I’m capable of.
Preoccupied with a little hole, are you? A true sui generis.
But you miss the point. It is a fine line, and I admittedly step over it all too often, but why not embrace the richness of our language? What is the problem with having a large vocabulary and using it? Why not be inquisitive enough to ask what something means rather than immediately brand someone a pedant because they use a word you don’t know?
In general, I think the advantages of having a large vocabulary should be to communicate more accurately and concisely. I love the richness of the English language. The way I see it, obscure words are obscure because they have less occasion for use. What I admire is someone who can successfully use a wide variety of language to elucidate, rather than obfuscate. For example, P. J. O’Rourke manages to toss in an appropriate sprinkling of words that I gladly look up.
Pedants have a tendency to incorrectly use or simply overuse certain words, belying an attempt to appear something they are not. I prefer a much more refined approach, knowing words without feeling the need to demonstrate unnecessarily. For example, I’d love the opportunity to use “rodomontonade” but for now it just sits up there in my mind waiting for the correct time.
This thread is devoted to words that, while once bright, if small, specks of color in the tapestry of language have become besmirched through overuse and misuse. If every instance of appropriate is replaced by apropos, the latter loses what had previously made it special.
Heh. I cross sevens and Z’s
vis-a-vis (with the accent marks and whatnot)
Just shut up!!
A while ago, I got one hilarious e-mail outlining “How to speak ‘Post-modern’”. What a complete hoot!! Talk about pretentious. I’ll have to dig it up. If you’ve never read it, let me know and I’ll e-mail it to you.
Did somebody just say ‘besmirched’?.. 
IN-surance.
I am a seven slasher. How else to differentiate from carelessly written 9s, 4s, and 1s ? When it is critical that written numbers are accurately portrayed please please slash your sevens, don’t top your ones, and don’t ever close the tops of your fours.
Area code (period) prefix (dash) number is US governmentese and not offensive to me at all.
And anyone who has ISSUES that they want to INTERFACE about can massage my momma dog’s taint with their tongue.
Commander Fortune said:
I do, too. I also cross J’s. I started going to Latvian school when I was three and learned to read and write before I went to American school. We learned the Eurpoean style and it’s stuck with me.
Plus, I like being pretentious.
I dot phone numbers. I like dots better than slashes. I’m lazy. Just be glad I’m putting spacers in at all, half my phone list records are straight numbers, with or without area codes depending on my ability to remember the area code, or first three digits. (If I can, I don’t write it down) So the records begin to look like this (all names and numbers faked)
Tim 5172886548
John 5933
mom’s cell 648.6995
And in general aren’t very organised…if I get them into my computer at all. (Yesterday I actually cleaned all my little scraps of doodle paper that had numbers on them and filed them properly! Woo-hoo!)
paradigm, synergy, and other Dilbert-isms
also…
“to move forward” (a simple phrase, but it seems to be injected at every opportunity to imply that the speaker is a real business visionary or something)
This is fine to me, but some people might find your word choice pedantic. (And yes, the word “pedantic” is pedantic. So?)
My boyfriend and I frequently use words that we assume the other understands. When he uses one that I don’t understand, I’ll either ask or look it up, and we’re both better off for that. I never use a word with the intention of confusing the listener or making myself appear smart - I use a word when it means exactly what I am trying to say. That’s what makes English so rich.
Now, bow before my trenchancy!
I’m trying to revive two little-used 19th century word…“blatherskite” and “Plugugley”,does this make me pedantic?
How about folks who use “and I” in an attempt to be hyper-proper, when “and me” would be grammatically correct?
Example:
Wrong: Henry invited Sheila and I to the party.
Right: Henry invited Sheila and me to the party.
For some reason, some folks seem to have it in their heads that the word “me” is almost never proper.
Also, I had a friend once who used “pedestrian” as a sort of all-purpose put-down for anything he didn’t like.
“X is so pedestrian.”
Or if you made a statement with which he disagreed:
(In sneering tones:) “That so pedestrian.”
I don’t think he had a clue what the word meant. It just had a nicely (pseudo-)intellectual ring to it.
The number one transgression: affecting, at ANY time, a British accent.
Mocking a Southern accent but misusing the simple contraction of ‘you all’ in the singular.
People who use ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ to mean ‘water’. Yeah, yeah, it’s cute the first time. Give it a rest already.
‘Capice?’ by people who aren’t Italian.
The coy use of ‘moi?’ by the non-French. Inexplicably, when the French use it, it’s even more irritating.
Same with … Oh, I don’t know. ‘Je nai se quois’
People who use, ‘ditto’ for ‘same with’.
Language purists who like to point out ‘irritating’ doesn’t really mean ‘annoy’.
The word, ‘comport’. Gah.
The phrase, ‘vis-a-vis.’ Gah. Gah.
People who quote Proust, then use the little “quotation mark gestures” with their fingerstips. GAH.
I defy you to use the word ‘juxtapose’ in a sentence without sounding like a twit.
Now, wouldn’t that last sentence have been vastly improved if I used the word ‘dare’ for ‘defy’ – and ANY other insult for ‘twit’?
People who debate you on message boards, THEN instead of talking about the underlying differences in your ideas or beliefs, nitpick your posts by breaking up your train of thought, badly paraphrase, and throw out various debate team terminology like ‘attack ad hominem’ and ‘ad hoc’ and ‘straw man’…
While I’m at it, using the word ‘forensics’ to mean ‘debate.’
People who avoid perfectly plain Anglo/Saxon words for the pretense of more so-called ‘genteel’ words… like ‘perspire,’ ‘masticate,’ ‘fornicate,’ et. al.
Oh, yeah. People who verbally say, ‘Et. Al.’ instead of ‘excetera.’ And people who overdo that by repeating it twice in the same sentence. (“Excetera, excetera”)
Anytime when the goyium use Yiddish. Oh, vey.
Lastly – and I gleefully include myself in this – ANYONE with the nerve to drop foreign words and phrases and mispronounces / misspells them in a failing attempt to seem even slightly knowledgeable…