For various reasons some words bother me. I offer up pedophile (or paedophile) - from the Latin for 'lover of children' as one of those words. Does the sexual molestation of children qualify as love of any kind? I think not. Holding with Latin, the pedophile is better described as pedomolestor, which is more revealing of his/her mental or moral sickness. Does anyone else have a peeve with a specific word? My annoyance with the above is that the root language meaning doesn't match the modern use, but you may have other reasons that a word or its usage bothers you.
Utilize (instead of just plain old use). In normal conversation it sounds pretentious. It has become extremely popular in recent years. You wouldn't say "I utilized my last bit of sugar baking that cake," or would you?
I also notice people using "myself" when "I" is the correct word. "Bill, Jane and MYSELF went to the concert." Um, no.
Not only specific words but poor grammar makes me angry. Expressions such as "The good food is the main reason I came for." and the like make me want to kick a teacher. I think a dangling article shows that the person just doesn't care.
Mis-use of the words healthy and healthful used to make me nuts but it is done so much now, I have given up. You are healthy if you are not sick. My chickens are healthy because of the excellent care they receive and their tv watching is limited. Cheerios are NOT healthy!!! They are healthful to eat. But they can not be sick OR well.
I disagree. I can tell if my Cheerios are having a little oatey stomach upset. When that happens I don't pour milk on them in case that makes it worse. I know that when I'm not feeling good I don't like milk poured on me. After reviewing the above I think that it's maybe time for me to have a little internet break.
I should have titled this thread something like Poor Use Of Language, because it can go in several directions. In general, illiteracy and bad grammar irritate me. It is worse still when the culprits seem proud of their deficits. It certainly doesn't prevent them from endless postings and comments on myriad sites. The internet doesn't slow down enough for correcting these idiots. Example In the spoken word: im por tant I hear it pronounced often as im por dent, or worse, im por ent. I want to reach through the monitor and throttle someone. There are hundreds of other twistings and distortions of the English language every day. I personally believe that the dumbing down of America is a deliberate, long term goal by the corporate elite. They want voters who can't think and consumers who believe what they're told by the boob tube. Stupid people tend to be slaves to one thing or another. The idea of freedom scares them.
My all-time favorite, "irregardless." When 'they' actually put that in the dictionary because so many people were using the word I nearly freaked. (I freak easily.) That is a double-negative, so it does not mean without regard. It means with regard. Damn. From the losers at Merriam-Webster: "Irregardless is included in our dictionary because it has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795," the dictionary's staff wrote in a "Words of the Week" roundup on Friday. "We do not make the English language, we merely record it."
Including such idiocy in a dictionary confers validity on that nonsense. The paranoiac in me sees the degradation of language as a deliberate project by a degenerate elite. That decay makes it ever harder to have sensible discourse and debate about political trends and daily events. Eerie guard less, maybe I'm seeing plots where there are none.
One person who influenced me a great deal as I tried to learn the real history that they don't teach us was Hannah Arendt. The work which I studied most was The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). The following photo is from 1933 when she would have been 27. I've said it before - I'm attracted to and scared by smart women. From Wikipedia - minor editing by me Hannah Arendt (14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.Her history of citizenship status: German (1906–37) Stateless (1937–50) United States (from 1950) One of her insights was that totalitarian regimes try to create a social landscape where the mass of people believe everything and nothing, i.e. that they believe nothing they are told but also that everything is possible. Such people are easy to control because they have abandoned any strong moral stance and get through the day by giving over control of heir lives to forces outside of themselves. That's a scenario that's difficult to understand unless you experience it as everyday life, as we are now doing in 2022.
Phobic. (Latin Phobos=fear/terror). The word phobic or phobia was pretty much restricted to those things people are afraid of but recently, the term changed to not only mean “fear” or afraid but to also mean an aversion or dislike.