Vocabulary Attribute: Phrases to Avoid

I came across this in the first para­graph of an old post and cringed. First, «com­plete and utter» seems redun­dant. Per­haps it isn’t always; the two words have some­what dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions if very sim­i­lar usage. It’s pos­si­ble that one would want to spec­i­fy both that some­thing is not only total­ly what­ev­er attribute is being ascribed, but that attribute in the most extreme manner.

I’m hav­ing trou­ble com­ing up with an exam­ple of that hypo­thet­i­cal, which leads me all the more … Read the rest

This hol­i­day sea­son Sears’s slo­gan is «how to gift.»

I know more than a cou­ple peo­ple who share a pet peeve: the use of the word *gift* as a verb. They com­plain with good jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that it is com­mon to turn a noun into a verb in place of choos­ing words with enough care that no made-up word would be nec­es­sary. Nor­mal­ly I’d be in agree­ment, but in the case of *gift* I’ve defend­ed the usage.

The dif­fer­ence in usage is whether … Read the rest

I can’t fault the New York Times too much. After all, they were quot­ing what oth­ers said in yes­ter­day’s arti­cle Can a Play­ground Be Too Safe? about the effects of mod­ern safe­ty play­ground equip­ment on the emo­tion­al growth of children.

«Para­dox­i­cal­ly,» the psy­chol­o­gists write, «we posit that our fear of chil­dren being harmed by most­ly harm­less injuries may result in more fear­ful chil­dren and increased lev­els of psychopathology.»

These con­clu­sions should not be at all sur­pris­ing. This les­son was learnt … Read the rest

I cringe almost every time I see this phrase, and espe­cial­ly hate «just so hap­pens». It almost always indi­cates the writer attempt­ing to con­grat­u­late her or him­self on invent­ing some­thing unex­pect­ed for the read­er. It’s very much like the false mod­esty of the super­mod­el say­ing, «oh, this old thing?» about the design­er gown she wears.

The phrase, if used at all, should be used for gen­uine coin­ci­dence or serendip­i­ty: «The lack of the cor­rect allen wrench was all that stood in the way … Read the rest