And the Word is....

 

It’s the time of year when clever people make lists of words that should be banned from the mouths of those that live on planet earth. I may not be the cleverest, but I would like to get in early with a vote that the word ‘Megxit’ is banned.

Totally. As would be Ginger Whinger. Let’s just not hear any of it in 2023. Family business, keep it to yourself.

So what other words?

Well the word of the year seemingly is…”woman”.

Which I thought was a tad insulting. We are more than 50% of the planet and have 95% of the brains so why is that word of the year? To tell you the truth, I might not be quite sure what it means any more. It’s confusing.

Some more words on the list. “Irregardless” isn’t really a word and shouldn’t be on the list at all. I know that language must develop, but seriously?

“Absolutely” does not mean yes. These people should be fined.

“Amazing” There was a great program on TV on Hogmanay about how good Scottish people are at swearing. We swear par excellence. It is said, by non-Scottish people, that swearing shows a lack of vocabulary. This is not true. The constant use of the word ‘amazing’ and the word ‘like’ is what really shows a lack of vocabulary.

“quiet quit” I actually blogged about this, I am a trend setter, I am a with it dude. Pure, like amazeballs!

 “moving forward.” Please go away, and take your ‘circling back’ with you.

“tongue-in-cheek” I think we will be holding onto that one, as without that, I am nothing.

“banished” no idea why this is on the list. Although I could think of a few folk who could do with being banished. See comment above.

“GOAT.” Just say greatest of all time, it doesn’t take much longer, a goat is… a goat. Pele deserved to be called, the greatest of all time.

“inflection point,” mathematical term seemingly. I thought it was a type of speech pattern,

“gaslighting” On the list again. As my journalist friend says, it’ll stop being used when people stop gaslighting.

“Does that make sense?” I’m afraid I use this all the time, especially in emails when I’m trying to explain to a patient how to negotiate our collapsing NHS. It’s a way of making sure that they have understood what I’m waffling on about, so they can’t come back and say there was no informed consent as I hadn’t explained it to them. If it’s written down I’m not gaslighting them and they can’t gaslight me, even if they have to circle back to revisit the email in an effort to move forward.

“It is what it is” I think people who say this should be subject to a mandatory jail term.

‘Karen’ and ‘woke’  I’m sure these words started off with the best of intentions and with a relatively defined meaning. Now they seem to be banded about because A doesn’t suit B’s personal agenda which kind of hampers the whole discussion. I liked the comment that the biggest barrier to meaningful debate is the fact that people like to get offended early on just to prove that they are more offended than anybody else.

“hygge!” I’m sure you all know what it means. And weirdly there is a homeopathic remedy, the constitutional remedy or people who are/or enjoy hygge. They are described as liking to close the curtains, switch off the TV, light the fire, snuggle in with good friends, read books and generally don’t text people. One of the homeopathic traits of this is drinking hot soup from a mug using the mug to warm your hands.

Cryptocurrency Don’t understand it. Don’t want to.

Cycle logistics. To my dad that would be about power to weight ratios and how steep the hill was. Now it means that cyclists can negotiate city centres quicker than vans to do deliveries. I think a lot of that depends on the city, the cyclist and what’s been delivered.

De-consumerism. See last weeks blog re Prime, maybe we all need a bit of de-consumerism. The cost of the heating bill might necessitate it. This leads to frugalism. And those FIRE (financial independence, retire early” types. They seems to rely on cadging off other people. And anyway it maybe a racist comment, but being a Scot frugalism tends to go with the territory.

Infodemic. Too much information about something we couldn’t care less about. See Ginger Whinger above.

JOMO. Really is the same as hygge – the joy of missing out. Is that an oxymoron? Do we care?

What’s your word of the year. I think mine might be Deadline!

C