[thelist] OT (verbage)

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Thu Aug 17 08:24:02 CDT 2000


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Garvan Walshe
>
> The verb "to impact"  is just a bout permissible
> when you're talking about
> asteroids crashing into planets but even then
> it's an illiterate neologism
> crafted  by people who believe in using the most
> complicated and latinate
> words when at all possible in the mistaken belief
> that it makes them more
> credible.  If there isn't a latinate word to use,

while i agree with you, it's in the dictionary, and people
are *technically* using it correctly in most cases... of
course, connotations are often lost or rebuilt as this
happens...

i kind of lik watching shows like 'Cops' (dunno if you get
it over there, but i think you know what it is), where the
policemen sometimes try to say things that just aren't
right... i've seen some damn smart cops say things like, "he
sustained a contusion to his cranium area with many bruises
and profuse bleeding..."  clunky at best, but, like most
people using the 50-cent words, they are trying to sound
more intelligent, forgetting that larger vocabularies don't
often equal greater intelligence...

hell, listen to an Anderson consultant...





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