Word Snobbery on a Rainy Day

I’ll admit it: I’m a word snob. I use big words when small words would do just as well or better. It’s probably my only personality defect. Well, that and my lack of humility. Using big words is the more subtle of the two ways I let everyone know I am smarter than them. The other way is by writing it in a blog post.

Nobody gets more annoyed by my gargantuan vocabulary than my mother (Hi Mom!). To this day she still loves to tell anyone who will listen about the time when I was three years old and I called her despicable at department store (who says Daffy Duck never taught anyone anything?). Two years ago, I casually used the word “pejorative” in a conversation and she’s been giving me a hard time about it ever since, although she usually mispronounces it. The other day she called me so that I could explain what it meant to a car full of her friends.

So yes, I’m a word snob, and I won’t apologize for it. Quite the contrary. Instead of apologizing, I’m taking the world to task. Too many people misuse words, and since I am smarter than everyone else, I feel it is my responsibility to rectify these errors. You’re welcome.

Culprit number one is the word “literally”. Literally basically means “actually” or “no really, it happened”. It should not be used as a word of emphasis. A hard tackle in football does not literally take someone’s head off unless the person being tackled is subsequently laying dead on the field with their head separated from their body. It is not literally raining cats and dogs unless the furry animals are actually descending from the sky in the form of precipitation. This does not literally drive me crazy, but it’s a close thing.

Culprit number two is “ironic” or “irony”. This is probably the most misused word of all. Personally I blame Alanis Morissette. There’s two definitions of ironic and most of the stuff in her song is neither. A free ride when you’ve already paid is bad luck. Good advice that you just didn’t take is stupidity. Some guy who’s afraid of heights dying in a plane crash is tragic (sorry, my knowledge of Alanis Morissette lyrics is limited). None of those things are ironic. Irony is most often misused in place of coincidence or just crappy luck. Examples: If a death metal drummer is also a classically trained pianist, that might be ironic; if a death metal drummer is killed when a piano falls on him, that is a coincidence and shitty luck. If the worst hitter on the baseball team gets the game winning hit, that’s ironic; if he gets that hit on his birthday, that’s a coincidence.

The third and final is just a personal pet peeve of mine. It is a word that is mostly used by other people who wish they were word snobs, but aren’t smart enough to pull it off. That word is “penultimate”. Penultimate is a big word that simply means “next to last”. It doesn’t mean “really, really ultimate.” That’s just something that annoys me.

And since that’s all I’ve got, that paragraph will be my penultimate paragraph, literally. And no, that’s not ironic.