Two words to retire

Every now and then, words blast out of the lexicon and elbow their way into every article, blog, or tweet. Within weeks, their welcome is worn out because they're pushing other and perhaps more colorful words to the sidelines. With the speed of communication today, a word can become a cliche in about 48 hours.

My two candidates for the Boy-I'm-Really-Sick-of-These-Words Award are iconic and snarky. Chrysler and GM are iconic corporations that build iconic brands with iconic nameplates. I can live with that, I guess, but now I'm also reading every day about iconic TV shows. Iconic movies. Iconic foods. Iconic style. Even iconic sunglasses and lipstick shades. Not to be iconoclastic, but I bet we can stumble along with other words. Popular, perhaps, or well-known, or even beloved.

When someone recently referred to something I'd written as snarky, I thought it was relatively descriptive. But suddenly I have so much company in Snarkville that I'm thinking of moving out. Anything that's a little snide, a little sarcastic, a little cynical, is now snarky. I like having a choice. Will I be sardonic today? Or caustic? Sassy? Mocking? Maybe derisive or supercilious. But not snarky. Not anymore.

Let's all get out our thesauruses (I love that word; for me it always conjures up a really erudite dinosaur who wears thick glasses) and find some apt replacements for words that have lost their zing.

Closed captioning 2

After the last post, I found another lovely misuse on a caption. This one occurs a great deal in speech as well, so I thought I'd bring it up. You'll find it in the confused word pairs section of my book Talking Your Way to the Top.

Desperate Housewives voiceover caption: "What she didn't know was that the Calvary was on the way."

I don't think so. Let's look at the words being confused here: Calvary and cavalry.

Calvary is the place where Jesus was crucified.

Cavalry means troops that fight on horseback or in armored vehicles.

Usually it's the cavalry that rides to the rescue, not the Calvary. That place hasn't moved in millennia.

Because I was reading the caption and not listening to the voiceover, I'm not sure what was said, but I'd put down money that the reader got it right and the caption writer was the one who didn't know the difference. But someone in production should have been watching. Oversight seems to be lacking in the caption world.

A change in direction

As of today, I'm writing two blogs. The newer one, The Grammar Granny (http://grammargranny.blogspot.com), will deal with grammar and usage issues I've sometimes covered in this space. This blog now will be devoted to issues about writing, publishing, the state of English today, and other more philosophical topics. I'll still throw in those goofy turns of phrase I hear so often, but if it's straight grammar and usage that interest you, try The Grammar Granny.

Hope to see and hear from you in both places.