Why do we need this word anymore? Why do I still see it occasionally in news articles or plot descriptions? i.e. “Sally was a young coed who had no idea the political intrigue that awaited her during the summer”
Co-ed is an abbreviation for Co-educational, referring to a female student going to a school with both female and male students, from the 19th century. ”Girls and boys going to school? Together? What kind of world are we living in? Why, we must have have a special term for this most egregious exceptional event,” the blogger said sarcastically.
Shouldn’t we have a special word for all the dozens of young ladies that attend female only schools? Wouldn’t that be a more more uncommon occurrence that necessitates extra adjectives?
So, the next time you see the word ‘coed’ in anything written written after 1950, I want you to find the author, throw the book, article, or internet at him and yell, “You wasted my time with anachronistic descriptions! And I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
October 2, 2008 at 5:28 pm |
If were getting rid of words, can I add a few to the list?
1) Whom, Nobody uses this word except in the opening to letters to people you dont know “to whom it may concern”
2)Political Debate, OK thats 2 words, but one single concept. I have heard stories of ongoing passionate debates from the past where the different candidates would go on and on about the things that they were most concerned about. Now days they are political soundbite machines. Calculated answers that stay as close to the ‘middle’ as possible. Politics are no longer about what one party or the other believes in, rather they are about how can you WIN.
Eh I could go on with other words/phrases that annoy me, but this is your blog not mine
October 2, 2008 at 7:22 pm |
You can go on with more words, tonight I hope to find time to write about “flavor”.
‘Whom’ is definitely a word we can do without, it just makes an unnecessary distinction.
There are some real political debates, but yes, the big ones do seem to be just canned answers where the politician ignore the actual question and just answers the question that they want to. The worst case of this was when Dukakis was asked about punishing someone that murdered his wife; he got a lot of flack for being too dispassionate in his answer, because he just said his prepared capital punishment talking points, instead of just answering the actual question.
October 2, 2008 at 9:20 pm |
This could easily spirlal into a converastion about Oxymorons, but thats so cleche’d …
Heres an odd one that I dont like … “Blog” but not for the reason you think. I actualy work as a system administrator, and my boss has this nasty habbit of picking up the “tech word of the day” about 3 years too late.
Earlier this year he decided that we should add a message board but for some reason he uses the term message board and blog interchangably its incredibly frustrating, I’ve told him a few times he actually means a message board, but he insists on saying “blog” he thinks it makes him sound “techie” or something?!
When he says it its like fingernails on a chalk board, it honestly reminds me of when I was a teenager and my parents would try and use my slang to “relate” to me …. its just kind of sad…