my favorite things

actually, that headline is a lie. this is a post about some things i hate. specifically words.

here's one: brethren.

it's pompous (is pompous pompous? there must be a term for that, a word that represents what the word means)

last night while reading, I came across too many times the word brethren. sometimes writers use the word in jest (another word that rankles sometimes) and sometimes they use it in earnest. really, they should never use it. it's old-fashioned and stilted.

signage

once upon a time i woke up every working day at 2:30 am in order to get to my job that started an hour later writing news for the radio. one early morning, hours before dawn, someone used the word signage and my producer, a man embittered long before his age necessitated it, railed against it. i think now it might be in the dictionary. i am too lazy to check. but i don't know why people use it when the word signs will do. it makes me think the the state of being a sign has been pathologized. signage. it also looks dumb when you see it written.

if memory serves, and oh, how it serves, my older sister used to hate the word adolescence, around the time that she was one (kind of like is pompous pompous?). i don't know, never asked, if she didn't like the way the word sounds (i can kind of understand that, there's something muted and like a dull knife about its pronunciation) or what it stood for.