In my profession, words matter. I've always appreciated a clever turn of phrase, or a witty rejoinder or a pithy remark. By no means do I consider myself a wordsmith, but as a spectator of language, of sorts, I'm unnecessarily critical of the misuse and abuse that goes on with the English language. I can't help it: I hear something that's amiss and it grates. I have no right to be so critical; as I've said, I'm no wordsmith. But I appreciate when the language is used beautifully, so I'm critical when it's misused.
Every day, someone in the media or in entertainment misspeaks and says something to butcher the English language. Here are but a few of the ones that irk me.
When singing the national anthem, the word perilous has various pronunciations. Forget about the extraneous yodeling -- bothersome in and of itself -- but the word perilous can be pronounce as PAIR uh lis, as opposed to PAIR i lus. Focus, people, focus.
Sad or tragic events are referred to as heart-wrenching. Hearts are rent, not wrenched. One wrenches a gut but rends a heart: Heart-rending and gut-wrenching are the expressions.
For those wishing to sound sophisticated, from whence is uttered when someone wants to say from where. The only trouble with this pseudo-sophistication is that whence already means from where, making from whence from from where. It's a bit redundant.
On the mindless romantic shows (Love is Blind, The Bachelor, etc.) people speak of their journeys, their chemistry and their connections. These have been beaten to death so much they're glue now. Find better words.
In a similar vein, every year there seems to be a word previously in the shadows that becomes fashionable. A few years back the word icon and its adjectival form iconic were in vogue. They have been so overused that something or someone that is highly visible or successful is now an icon or iconic. If that's the case, everything is so iconic that nothing is iconic any longer. Recently, the word kinetic has gained traction. I fear for its overuse.
The word none is abused daily. None comes from no one. That means it's singular, not plural. Nevertheless, it's almost always used as a plural: There are none in here...
...Similarly, there is and there are have morphed into there is. There's at least fifty ways to do that.... We can do better.
In church, whenever a layman leads a prayer, the word just is overused. For example: Lord, we are just so happy to praise You and just ask that you protect us and guide us as we just try to honor You and live the life You want us to lead. We're simply sinners who are just trying to live our lives according to Your dictates. We just want to love You and honor You as you deserve.... Humbly could substitute for just a couple of times...just to mix it up.
This reminds me one time where I prepared a client for a deposition. I advised the client that in the event he couldn't remember something exactly he should qualify it by saying as far as I recall, if I remember correctly, I'm not sure but, approximately, etc., but to alternate which phrase he was using. In the deposition the client got so nervous that he got so nervous that he used approximately every time he tried to qualify an answer.
As a Spanish-speaker, it irks me when someone wants to sound sophisticated and throw a Spanish word into a speech. I should be happy. But in the current climate where bad men from foreign lands have invaded our country, talking heads like to talk about bad hombres, but mispronounce hombre as hambre. So much for sophistication: hambre means hunger, not man.
We all get tongue-tied, trip over our words, have senior moments. But it's easy to discern when someone is simply making a mistake versus not knowing the correct usage in the first place.
(c) 2025 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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