Hazar for words

I love words. Words are cool, words are great, words allow one to get one's meaning across, but they also allow so much more. The words you use, the way you use them, and the care with which you choose your words tells a great deal about you, in my opinion. And before you jump to accusations of snobbery, I admit that education and social class are two of the broad categories your word usage can reveal, however those aspects of your character have nothing to do with whether I like you and wish to carry on a conversation with you or not. My friends use words in all sorts of wonderful ways, and I love them for it. Hazar for words.

Having said all that, I'd like to issue a qualified hazoo to the Macquarie Dictionary who have a "Word of the Year" competition on their website, trying to find the best new words or phrases from 2006, presumably to include in the next edition of the Dictionary. They have included such "words" as emo, muffin top, spaghettini, ubersexual and cyberstalking.

Now, I am all for people making up and using words in any way they see fit. I love it when someone tacks the German uber, meaning "super" or similar, onto some other word to show that they loved watching Buffy. I can't get enough of people shortening entire concepts into one brief word (i.e. emo) and then complaining that no one really knows exactly what the word stands for anymore. And I just love phrases such as muffin top, which are nothing but derogatory, becoming common parlance. Words are great that way - but do we really need to write them all down and record them for posterity? I can recall being a young student and being given only the Macquarie Dictionary to study. If this trend has continued today, and I believe it has, then kids will be coming out of school thinking that uberthis and cyberthat are perfectly acceptable English words and phrases, and not the quirky, idiosynratic words they really are. Thin spaghetti is thin spaghetti, or better still, vermicelli, not spaghettini. Call me an old fasioned purist, but I'd love to see people going to the trouble of finding the right word for the circumstance, and not being rewarded when they use the most convenient one which springs to mind.

So, hazar for people being themselves and using words in whichever way they wish, and hazoo for the people who try to record the individuality out of our society.

.e.
[Category: random_stuff]

P.S. I am quite happy to admit that many of the wonderful words we have in our language now were once quirky and new, and then Mr Johnson decided to note them down in his dictionary so we have them today. Excellent! But methinks the practice has to stop sometime, and now is the time!