Overused words
One of my pet peeves is the overuse of certain words in our vocabulary. Turn on the Television and in a news story we will hear certain words over and over again.
Our speech patterns are formed by what we hear. When we hear certain phrases many times, we incorporate them into our vocabulary. Sequences of words, if heard often enough, become part of the everyday language.
We hear certain words and phrases through television news and opinion programs so often, we can insert them ourselves as if on cue. It's almost as if one broadcast station news editor decides which adjective to use to describe an incident, and sends a memo to every other newscaster and commentator at every other station in the area to use that adjective with every mention of the current news incident.
Soon the word or phrase is used to describe anything and everything.The current word is : "unprecedented".It's an unprecedented illness; it's an unprecedented time in history; the numbers of people affected is unprecedented, and on,and on.
The word "unique" is French in origin and means "the only one." However, by the mid 19th century it came into popular use and is still used today to describe the new or unusual. I remember being told by my high school English teachers not to describe everything out of the ordinary as "unique."
A few years ago violent storms and murders could no longer be described as horrible, or tragic. They had to be escalated to "horrific." For awhile every bad act of weather or of human hand was "Horrific."
So what's my point? Only that we are, of necessity, wordsmiths. We write regular articles on a particular niche in hopes that readers will respond favorably to any advertisements we carry. By nature, since we are writing on a single subject, we could get in a rut and use similar language in every article we publish. By expanding our vocabulary, our postings can maintain a certain sparkle to keep our readers coming back for more.
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Now that I think about it, you are right. There are some words that are overused by the media. It gets into our subconscious and we use them without thinking. Need to be mindful of that when we write.
I agree the news media pounds this into us day in and day out. It behooves us to amplify the conversation with judicious use of the English Language.
I seem to recall blogging about something similar back a few years ago. polysyllabic pomposity Enjoy
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You hit the nail on the head with this post. These unprecedented times call for unprecedented words to describe them!
I have tried to find different words to use rather than unprecedented to describe the time we as a world are going through. Because I work for a newspaper, which I know you understand, we don't want every headline to read the same way so we try to find different words to at least put in the headlines!
When I write my blogs for my business, I attempt to use different wording which is still readable.
Take care, Barb!
With 2020 vision,
Karin 😁