I ongo, you ongo, he ongoes

:rant: It started with ongoing, but is now pandemic. Today’s annoyance, in press articles about Tessa Jowell, DOWNPLAY.

What is wrong with “play down”? why do we need to keep inventing new verbs to say things we can say perfectly well and a lot more clearly using adverbs?

Who decided to declare war on adverbs?

Why not go the whole hog and only have compound verbs…..

Abouthink it! This would English bettermake. It would upneaten our sentences hugely and awaydo with lots of unnecessary words.

If that is not totally upfucked, I don’t know what is.

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This entry was written by Tim, posted on Sat Mar 4 2006 at 10:02, filed under Tim's Posts, ranting or raving. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

14 Comments

  1. HelenHaricot
    Posted Sat Mar 4 2006 at 11:25 | Permalink

    my cheif exec asked us all to make sure we do our outcomings???

  2. Tim
    Posted Sat Mar 4 2006 at 12:10 | Permalink

    he probably meant to tell you to “suremake”

  3. Angela
    Posted Sat Mar 4 2006 at 20:20 | Permalink

    Hear, hear!

    My current personal favourite takes it a step further – “upcoming” (used as an adjective to describe something that is coming up) – why make up a new word for this when we already have the perfectly good “forthcoming”?

    Maybe, though, we should just outchill and aboutforget it?

  4. Tim
    Posted Sat Mar 4 2006 at 20:41 | Permalink

    Jax likes outchill…….

    Noooooooooooooooooooo…………………

  5. Jan
    Posted Sat Mar 4 2006 at 20:57 | Permalink

    Well, Tim, that made me outloudlaugh :)

  6. Libertus
    Posted Mon Mar 6 2006 at 0:04 | Permalink

    You’re just speaking English with German syntax!

  7. Libertus
    Posted Mon Mar 6 2006 at 0:11 | Permalink

    Surfwebbing, smokejointing and outchilling.

    Where’s my seekjobber’s allowance?

    :)

  8. Tim
    Posted Mon Mar 6 2006 at 1:02 | Permalink

    See it gets worse!

    Now everyone is outchilling.

  9. Libertus
    Posted Fri Mar 10 2006 at 0:25 | Permalink

    As I have adopted the word “outchill”, honour must be served. Share and enjoy.

    http://www.libertini.net/libertus/2006/03/09/fan-chart/#brainstorm-3

  10. Liz (attamum)
    Posted Fri Mar 10 2006 at 9:50 | Permalink

    I sent this to my daughter who’s studying linguistics (just like I did 20 years ago – blushing with pride-) as we often have conversations like this. My most recent bugbear concerns ‘concerns’, the way it has started to mean ‘worries’. Grr!

  11. Tim
    Posted Fri Mar 10 2006 at 21:46 | Permalink

    Hi Liz

    My permanent gripe is proactive. Yet another meeting bingo buzzword.

    Mostly it is used as a synonym for “active”. So the “pro” is merely a waste of breath.

    More rarely it gets used to mean preemptive, which was a perfectly good word, clearer and more expressive.

  12. Christina Springer
    Posted Sat Mar 11 2006 at 16:49 | Permalink

    On your page, Jax! If I could guarentee my son would have all 12 years of his education from this teacher/poet, he’d be in school the minute I could get him registered. (Disclaimer – Taylor Mali is a fellow poet/friend/acquaintance – so I’m biased.)

    These are fun reads along the same lines.

    Totally Like Whatever
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=21

    The the impotence of proofreading
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=30

    Like Lily Like Wilson
    http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=15

  13. Jax
    Posted Sat Mar 11 2006 at 22:11 | Permalink

    We like the poems. A lot. :)

  14. Tim
    Posted Sat Mar 11 2006 at 22:32 | Permalink

    the red penis your friend :rofl: