Words
August 19th, 2008 at 11:30pm |
I’m a word person. I love words. I sometimes hate them. I’m surrounded by them. I devour them with my eyes.
And I cringe sometimes when they’re bent, distorted, overused.
Today, it was rock star.
I’m sorry. You can’t be a rock star if you are not, in fact, a rock star.
You can’t use this word to describe a regional politician. I’ve also seen it used for a much more famous politician, and he too is not a rock star. He is a presidential candidate.
Other words I think are overused or misused:
- hero
- tragedy
- diva
Would anyone else care to share word peeves?
Posted in I am an angry girl
Vast majority irks me. Perhaps use overwhelming majority, if it warrants it. But most people use vast majority when they simply mean majority. Way overused.
It’s like lawyers and the word use. Nobody ever uses anything. They, however, utilize everything.
Torrential downpour.
Senseless violence (This often has class overtones. It’s often senseless depending the socioeconomic status of the victim.)
There’s a talk show host I listen to in the morning, Fred Grandy (Gopher from “Love boat”) and he uses the phrase “the fact of the matter is” all the time. Every time I hear him say, “The fact of the matter is,” it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Why? Because he always prefaces his opinion with that phrase. Sorry, opinion is very different from fact.
Heh heh, Matt. That reminds me of a coworker of my little brother’s who used to say, “The fact of the matter being, and stuff like that…” That was a running joke for a very long time, with emphases on different words, different embellishments, etc.
The fact of the matter BEING… andstuffflikethat.
Another thing …
A professional news organization should *never* use three exclamation points in a headline. One is questionable. Three is for teenagers who have no grasp on punctuation.