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December 31, 2004

5 Most Dreaded Words of 2004

I had thoughts about what to do for the last calendar day of the year 2004. First, I can't itemize too much that occurred in the beginning of the year, before I started this blog. What happened in January? I'm sure some important things occurred. But trying to figure out exactly what they were would be quite a chore.

I've had four people die this year who were close to me, but I cannot remember Fredley's last name other than it starts with B, and a search on Sun-Sentinel.com yielded little to help me. I'll save my tribute for another date.

Then the Roomie, who is reading The Celestine Prophecy, came in and posed an interesting question, “Have you ever seen the word ‘moot’ used in any context besides along with the word ‘point’?” I don't like the word moot, and think that people that use it are trying to sound grandiloquent. As it turns out, however, the origin of moot is somewhat different than people thought.

Since this blog is principally about writing, above everything else, I thought I'd make the year-end post about writing as well. So, without further ado, here are my five most improperly used and annoying words from 2004:

5. moot Although this word has come to be defined as “of no practical importance; irrelevant,” the original meaning of the word was debatable. From Bartleby.com:

The adjective moot is originally a legal term going back to the mid-16th century. It derives from the noun moot, in its sense of a hypothetical case argued as an exercise by law students. Consequently, a moot question is one that is arguable or open to debate. But in the mid-19th century people also began to look at the hypothetical side of moot as its essential meaning, and they started to use the word to mean “of no significance or relevance.” Thus, a moot point, however debatable, is one that has no practical value. A number of critics have objected to this use, but 59 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it in the sentence The nominee himself chastised the White House for failing to do more to support him, but his concerns became moot when a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would oppose the nomination. When using moot one should be sure that the context makes clear which sense is meant.

Don't use moot, especially in the cliché, “moot point”. Instead use irrelevant, inconsequential, unimportant, unnecessary.

4. Ft. Don't use an abbreviation when you only lose one or two character (the period makes three). The forefathers and early mapmakers didn't have computers and couldn't easily change font sizes. There were abbreviations for practically everything. But in modern day English, the only time it is proper to use the abbreviations, Ft., Mt., So., or No., with regard to a city name is when you are dealing with a clear space constraint. The post office abbreviates Fort Lauderdale as FORTLAUDER. They don't even shorten Fort. Fort is a perfectly good word to spell out. There's no reason you should ever abbreviate it. Not even if you do the prompts for WSVN Channel 7 news in Miami. Dumbass idiots.

3. amongst (also unbeknownst) Amongst bears the same literal meaning as among. It's a useless word.

2. notate In English we have the noun, note. From that noun comes the verb, note, which means, “to create a note.” From that verb comes the noun, notation, which has a slightly different connotation than the noun, note, but basically means the same thing. So why did we have to create a whole new verb meaning “to create a notation?” Don't use notate. It's ugly and obsequious, and sounds downright illiterate. Use note, instead.

1. irregardless Just because we hear the word over and over again, doesn't mean we have to add it to the dictionary. I thought people had dumped it from their vocabularies, but it just keeps cropping back up. I wouldn't have included it if I didn't just hear it the other day. I kept my mouth shut when I heard it. I had some respect for the person who said it. In retrospect, I don't know why. The word is regardless.

Honest to goodness, use any of these words and most educated people will think you're an idiot. My list will probably be close to the same next year, but at one time “Ft.” was the number one word. It's dropped to number 4 this year, probably because I'm noticing it less often. Doesn't mean it's not being used as much. It's wrong...irregardless of how much I hear it.

Posted by Bastique at December 31, 2004 2:30 PM

Comments

Here here! Allow me to add a few honorable mentions:

reoccur. It's totally redundant. It's been a while since I looked it up, but it wasn't a word back in my school daze. Things either occur or recur. Having said that, I find that dictationaries are lenient as time goes by. Slang gets incorporated as well as bad grammer.


Wy. People type Wy. instead of Way. My question: Why? It's still three characters. Get a grip folks. Even Microsoft Word doesn't recognize Wy. The post office prefers WY which fits with their two character abbreviation scheme.


Alright. This was once a misspelled word, but now can be found in dictionaries. Before then, nada. The original expression was two words: all right. Somehow in writing it, people got lazy. Does anybody write alwrong? I rest my case.


Happy New Year, C

Posted by: X at December 31, 2004 3:17 PM

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