Newspeak doubleplus ungood
With apologies to George Orwell
So I was reading an article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and I finally cracked... I could no longer ignore one of my pet peeves.
The journalist was referring to mobile mail devices (basically Blackberrys), and how they were popular for "time-poor executives"... TIME POOR?!!!
WTF is wrong with "busy"?!!!
I abhor the increasing adoption of these nonsensical phrases that bring no value whatsoever to the language. Now, I'm all for the evolution of English. I don't mind that new words are introduced, but this kind of thing is just some journalist or on-line pundit creating what they believe to be a clever pithy phrase. In fact, they are showing themselves to be pretentious and boring prats.
I hated the phrase when I first heard it on a crumby TV advert about speedy, online banking, but I chalked it up to some bullshit advertising peon trying to impress their client. Now I see it has infested one of the few quality Australian papers. Where on Earth was this man's editor?!
Other stinking, valueless phrases I have seen in common usage lately are:
cognitive dissonance
Yes, I know it's a semi-formal psychological term, coined about UFO freaks no less. But what's wrong with "contradictory" or "counterintuitive"?
neocon
What's wrong with Fascist?! (joke! joke!)
What are you "favourites"?
Mr Mephisto
Last edited by Mephisto2; 07-17-2006 at 08:29 PM..
|