Today I hiked the half hour to the library and back to return some very late books. These were books on evolution and dinosaurs which the younger sprout had got and then proceded to drag into his cave-like den and not give back in time for me to return. An oversight compounded by the fact that in my infinite wisdom I forgot how to log onto the online site to renew the books.
Anyway, the bite wasn’t bad. About $8 total. And walking to the library was good for me. We’ve been much too sedentary of late. However, because I bore easily, I dragged one of the boys out of bed to walk to the library with. Robert was the lucky winner — being much easier to wake up than Eric.
On the way up from the library, we were discussing the short story he’s working on — zombie dinosaur. Seriously — and he said writers emblemized something or other.
I was sure he’d made up the word on the spot. He came home and proved to me — with dictionary — that he wasn’t.
This is all fine and dandy, but it still HAS to be one of the ugliest words I’ve ever heard. I suspect it’s a result of the tendency to unduly verbify nouns, exemplified by such words as “impacting.” They might be perfectly serviceable, but they grate at some basic word-lover level.
I’d say emblemize emblemizes the impacting of the verbification of nouns. We should index it and de-contentise it.
Seriously — is this another of those instances of “it only bothers you, Sarah”? Or are there words so ugly they make your ears hurt to hear them?
According To Hoyt 
Eschew obfuscation!
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Ugly word, ungainly too. I’d hate to see it in a story…
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It’s the verbal equivalent of hitting your funny bone. No, you’re not the only one.
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are there words so ugly they make your ears hurt to hear them?
I wrote about a couple of those last month, as a matter of fact.
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You’re not alone, although I”ve learned to turn a blind eye whenever I see those abominations. Working in the government is an exercise in avoiding abominations, and I’m sure corporate offices are much the same.
Blech.
I suppose it’s the price we pay for the evolution of the language — there’s going to be clunkers and dead-ends, linguistically speaking, along with the neologisms that are more mellifluous. How else will we know what to use and what not to use? ;-)
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ouch. it’s like a dash of verbal white noise…real, but grating.
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*argh*
There is a trend in contemporary english to create ungainly, disphonous and downright ugly words by converting the first verb/noun thought of into their opposite (or adjectivising, or adverbing them)….
I’m not sure which is worse, the way verbing weirds language, or the renounification
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