The most useless word in the Engligh language...

Ack. “Supportable”? Where did that come from? Is that even a word?
Geez, I hate it when it does that! :slight_smile:

“Hermeneutic” and “heuristic” surely qualify, especially since I can never remember which is which.

“like”

As in I used to like be able to like express myself without like having to resort to like valleyspeak but like now it’s ingrained into like the enamel of like the teeth from which my words like sprout.

No, to be honest I don’t like it.

Alas, scredle, it is so.
I too am mortified. And just when I thought flammable and inflammable was bad enough.

“Doable” just grates my ears. And I don’t believe it’s even a word.

I nominate the word “precondition.” The prefix “pre” adds nothing to the word condition. “Pre” means something that comes “something that comes before”, and condition means “something that comes before a required performance”, so precondition literally means something that comes before something that comes before a required performance, but in use precondition and condition mean the same thing.

Damn, forgot to preview again. My friend Lucy is correct in saying that I cannot multitask. Try it this way:

I nominate the word precondition. The prefix pre adds nothing to the word condition. Pre means something that comes before, and condition means something that comes before something else as a prerequisite, so at face value precondition means something that comes before something that comes before something else as a prerequisite, but in actual use precondition is used as a hifaluting substitute for condition.

How’s that?

I think it’s rather appropriate that we’re trying to floccinaucihihilipilificate floccinaucihihilipilification. Of course if we do manage it, we will have paradoxically proved its worth.

[sub]Thank God for cut’n’paste[/sub]

“Oprah”

Redundant/redundancy
Pleonasm
Tautology

Uh, three words to express the same meaning? Is this some sort of self-referential hell?

My vote goes for an English article: “The”.

I mean, who on Earth would use an archaic word like that? :stuck_out_tongue:

[sub]by the way, Dragonblink is a really cool username.[/sub]

“Bevy” is a great word–fits perfectly in the song “Clubland” by Elvis Costello:

A handful of backhanders, and a bevy of beauties
Going off limits, going of duty
Going off the rails, going off with booty

And where would we be without that old chestnut:

A: Anyway, there was this, erm, group of cows in the middle of the road…
B: Herd of cows
A: Of course I’ve heard of cows!

Nothing wrong with adding extra syllables to words. Everybody knows that stupid people use short words and smart people use long words, so you can make yourself sound smarter by adding syllables. I now say “undisnonmalirregardless”, so I must be a genius.

I’m sorry, but if you get rid of “paradigm” 'hegemony" “Heuristics” and “Tautology” you’ll rob half the graduate students in the country of their ability to speak and write.

Saaaay, maybe that’s not such a - WHACK!

Hey! Who threw that!? Whoa, my department chair. Sorry, Prof.

Unless you’re Batman, how about ‘diabolical’?

Hijack:
Anybody know the name of this story?
I used to have it on a 7-inch 33 1/3rpm record.
Played that story over and over and over.
I think it was backed by The Teeny Tiny Woman.