Every now and then you stumble upon a phrase or a word and you’re all like oh that’s new, I like it, I’m gonna start using it. Look at you, expanding your vocabulary and whatnot, good for you. One would think that given the fact that one experienced joy whilst learning new things, one would continue to do so, but unfortunately a lot of people go a different route – they learn just the one and they’re set; so they go about their day, every day, beating that word/phrase to the punch, ruining it for the rest of us.
I cringe when I hear certain words being used in a day-to-day dialogue. It’s quite upsetting actually because it’s not the words that suck, it’s the fact that people killed the meaning behind them. Everything is AMAZING these days. How’s that bagel? AMAZING! How was your flight? AMAZING! How’s life? AMAZING! How’s your anything else in life that probably doesn’t require an exclamation point? Let me guess, it’s amazing… There are so many other words to describe things and feelings, why does everything how to be amazing?. It’s astonishing to me that people resort to the word amazing when there are so many other fantastic words that can be used to describe feelings.
It’s not just about people’s lack of variety when it comes to usage of descriptive adjectives. It’s also about the fact that over the years, using said adjectives to describe the most mundane things and events, words like “amazing” completely lost their power. If everything is amazing, how can something that is in fact amazing be amazing anymore? Perhaps you can resort to the word “epic”. Nope, you can’t, because that word has too become severely overused. Oh my God this burger is EPIC. Is it though? Is it really EPIC of all things a burger can be? Is it equivalent to the eruption of a volcano? Does it have more impact on your palate than a tsunami does on an entire coast? Come on now.
What about “hysterical”? That word literally implies hysteria – you’re laughing (or in some cases crying) so hard that you’re gasping for air and cannot stop. If you hear a story and manage to say “that’s hysterical” with a straight face, you’re doing it wrong. It’s mildly funny at best. If you’re being sarcastic however, that’s different – “That’s hysterical. You see my straight face? Yeah, that’s how hysterical what you just told me is. Now be gone, you peasant.” I’ll allow it. In any other case you’re just contributing to the ongoing epidemic of murdering the English language.
And you wanna know who’s responsible for this shit? BASIC BITCHES. If it weren’t for the basic bitches, words like “literally” wouldn’t be forced to have their definition altered. It LITERALLY happened in order to appease the greater public, which just so happens is filled with basic bitches. Before you know it, they’ll change the definition of amazing in the dictionary and instead of being what it is now, it’ll have “but can also mean ordinary” at the end.
