Archive for March 21st, 2008
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Word Salad
I don’t often get the chance to call someone “pedantic”, and it was a strange feeling to be doing so in a game of Call of Duty.
I like words. I like big ones, and small ones; I use profanity as my adverbs and nouns. Words can be fun. They can also be used to cover up for the fact that you have no clue what you’re saying; I used to spew bullshit all the time and call it gravy.
I’ve heard from plenty of people about the times I was just being wordy for the sake of it, and sometimes they’re right. It’s easy to get caught up in the flowery prose you’re putting down. A sort of highway hypnosis, as you watch words flow onto the page. But, occasionally, I’m accused of it in circumstances that are different. The reason we have so many words, is that life and it’s concepts are not always simple. Much like the necessity for the color “indigo” and “fuchsia”, there are degree that can only be delineated by specific words. I think the real struggle is knowing when to use them. But there’s also something that should be said to those who immediately cry wolf when the big words show up:
Get a fucking dictionary.
It’s not my fault if you don’t know the word “etymology” or “circumspect”, and complain when I use it in proper context. Quit being lazy, and read some books. Frankly, you strike me as scared little pissants who don’t want the world to know that you can’t immediately identify a word. I screw up all the time, big deal.
Conversely, I think when you’re shooting each other with pixelated weapons in a warehouse level of a video game, and somebody drops “yer” instead of “you’re”, maybe the Word Police can chill out.