Oh Well

I ongo, you ongo, he ongoes

by

:rant: It started with ongoing, but is now pandemic. Today’s annoyance, in press articles about Tessa Jowell, DOWNPLAY.

What is wrong with “play down”? why do we need to keep inventing new verbs to say things we can say perfectly well and a lot more clearly using adverbs?

Who decided to declare war on adverbs?

Why not go the whole hog and only have compound verbs…..

Abouthink it! This would English bettermake. It would upneaten our sentences hugely and awaydo with lots of unnecessary words.

If that is not totally upfucked, I don’t know what is.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. Hear, hear!
    My current personal favourite takes it a step further – “upcoming” (used as an adjective to describe something that is coming up) – why make up a new word for this when we already have the perfectly good “forthcoming”?
    Maybe, though, we should just outchill and aboutforget it?

  10. I sent this to my daughter who’s studying linguistics (just like I did 20 years ago – blushing with pride-) as we often have conversations like this. My most recent bugbear concerns ‘concerns’, the way it has started to mean ‘worries’. Grr!

  11. Hi Liz
    My permanent gripe is proactive. Yet another meeting bingo buzzword.
    Mostly it is used as a synonym for “active”. So the “pro” is merely a waste of breath.
    More rarely it gets used to mean preemptive, which was a perfectly good word, clearer and more expressive.

  12. On your page, Jax! If I could guarentee my son would have all 12 years of his education from this teacher/poet, he’d be in school the minute I could get him registered. (Disclaimer – Taylor Mali is a fellow poet/friend/acquaintance – so I’m biased.)
    These are fun reads along the same lines.
    Totally Like Whatever
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=21
    The the impotence of proofreading
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=30
    Like Lily Like Wilson
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=15