Everything is not “amazing”

February 9, 2015 • 3:32 pm

Back in the Pleistocene, I used to criticize my undergraduates for using the word “awesome” to refer to anything that was even slightly out of the ordinary. (I used to sit in the lab with several of them and the grad students, and we’d all push flies and chat. I would hear “awesome” all too often.) But that was a losing battle, and now “awesome” is firmly entrenched in Generation Z lingo as meaning “pretty good.”

But maybe it’s not too late to fight for the word “amazing.” It’s now used as a synonym for “nice,” as in, “You have to meet my amazing friend Julie.”

Yes, I know the English language evolves, but let’s look for the moment at what “amazing” really means, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Here are the four definitions; the last is the one used by the Young Folk:

Screen Shot 2015-02-09 at 1.24.57 PM

And here are the definitions of “amazement”; clearly the fourth one is the one that people usually mean when they say “amazing”:

  1. The condition of being mentally paralyzed, mental stupefaction, frenzy. Obs.
  2. Loss of presence of mind; bewilderment, perplexity, distraction (due to doubt as to what to do). Obs.
  3. Overwhelming fear or apprehension, consternation, alarm. Obs.
  4. Overwhelming wonder, whether due to mere surprise or to admiration.

Now I have no objection to using #4 as the positive adjective, but does the presence of Julie really evoke “overwhelming wonder”? Having met many of these “amazing” people, I think not.

And before you chide me for not accepting the changing usage of these adjectives, let’s ponder what is happening. Every word that once denoted an extreme condition of goodness, like “awesome” or “amazing,” is being systematically devalued. Eventually we will run out of words to denote the truly awesome things, like the Big Bang—or bats.  And then when people want to talk about those, what words will they have?

First they came for “awesome,” and I did not speak out because there were still other good adjectives left.

Then they came for “amazing,” and I did not speak out because you get criticized for opposing the way kids warp the language.

Then they came for “stupefying,” and there were no words left because I had let them all be downgraded.

As usual, put your rants below and DO NOT TELL ME THAT I SHOULD ACCEPT ALL CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE.

312 thoughts on “Everything is not “amazing””

  3. I completely agree, Professor Ceiling Cat! It drove me nuts when people started to use “awesome” in that way back in the 80s, or was it the 90s? And I *I* do it too! Ugh!

  4. In all seriousness, I have to agree. You see this in academia, especially at the non-elite institutions (such as mine). If an undergraduate can calculate (d/dt)sin(3t) they almost expect to be told how *awesome* and *amazing* they are.

    So, I admit that I’ve given into a bit; when someone or something is truly exceptional, I call it an “outlier” or an “outlying” event in that it is statistically rare.

  5. Guilty of using “awesome” just the other day even after thinking about how it was an improper use of the word. I thought for a moment about using another word, but in its colloquial use it actually felt wrong not to use it as most people do not appear to put much thought into its use. I don’t have the fortitude on this matter to avoid conforming, it seems.

    1. I use it with the No 4 meaning, but only when something really is special. Not for everyday nice.

      I thought my English was better than most, but I was unaware of the other three meanings.

        1. And I wish dictionaries wouldn’t do that! I seem to remember from my childhood that the first definition was the current common one.

          2. I should pay more attention to brands than I do. And with internet dictionaries now, I hardly notice whose imprints they are.

            Still, it seems like I’ve always had a Webster’s of one kind or another, and that they have made that listing order change somewhere along the line. (Guess I could do a little research and find out for sure.)

            Just as I can easily stump Google, which is supposed to be difficult, so can I stump dictionaries with what I feel are rather common scientific terms. Of course, none come to mind right this moment, but several times the dictionaries have let me down while I was playing Scrabble or Boggle. But also of course, I’ve never had a multivolume OED to hand, either.

          4. Hey, thanks for the link! I might find some time to see if I can come up with anything to stump it. 😀

    2. Yeah me too. I know it is lazy but it seems expected. Maybe I should try to bring back the word, “groovy”.

        2. We can also recycle “bitchen” (banned at my high school) and “rad” and several others.

          To quote Ford Perfect – “Belgium!”

      2. I’m already trying to bring “groovy” back, and utter it in response every time I hear someone utter “cool.”

          1. How about “neat?” I recently heard an elderly woman say it. I don’t think I’ve heard it since about 1969.

        2. I’m working on “groovy” as well.

          And, let’s not forget “solid,” “heavy,” “boss,” “keen,” and, just to show that I’m not *really* stuck in the 60s, “tight”. I would have mentioned “rad” and “bitchin” (as we spelled it), but I see others already beat me to it.

      3. I don’t know what Pinker said about it but the first thing I did after reading Jerry’s post was searching the comments to see if anyone mentioned “literary”… that awesome word that is literally never used to mean what it literally means any more.

        1. The gerund is a savage beast – it attacks peaceful pronouns and is a social snob to the gerundive. ‘Any fule kno’ this, thanks to Molesworth I, in ‘How to be Topp’ (Willans & Searle).

        2. Ah! Gerunds! THAT’s the term I was looking for last time I ranted about the habits of NZ newsreaders to construct entire paragraphs with gerunds and no proper verb.

          “The storm moving rapidly southwards, police warning all motorists to stay off the roads, farmers reporting heavy stock losses” etc etc etc.

          (And I scream at the TV “Where being the fucking verb, then?”)

          Come to NZ, we have an inexhaustible supply of them.

          1. I unfairly diss gerunds because we got in trouble for translating our Ancient Greek gerunds using English gerunds mostly because it is clunky and no one talks that way.

  8. The only human I’d even consider calling amazing is Stephen Hawking. Perhaps if this change in meaning (which I haven’t heard before) will lead to a corresponding change in comparatives and superlatives: amazinger, amazingest. x

  9. I agree with the gravamen of this post, but I have to quibble with your last sentence. We are, of course, allowed our own aesthetic likes and dislikes, linguistically, but the changing meanings of words are no more “corruption” than modern species are “corrupt” versions of their forebears.

    1. Yes, the problem is that if language was as unchanging as we’d like it to be, then we’d all talk like Hamlet. That’s why I have to have a glossary and lots of help to read it because many things in Shakespeare’s plays make no sense anymore.

      Many words have completely opposite meaning from what they used to have. Take ‘restive’. A long while ago it meant “refusing to go forward”, and one example was a restive horse. Now it means something opposite. What was “unable to advance”, now means “unable to remain still”. (With thanks to Anu Garg of A Word A Day for research sources).

      1. Are you sure that Anu Garg isn’t confusing ‘restive’ with ‘restless’? Or has the official definition been changed because the general population mis-used the word?

        If the latter then please stop the world so I can get off.

        1. I nearly provoked a lawsuit because I replied to an objector in an email that we were ‘bemused’ by his stated grounds of objection. (His grounds were indeed rather over-the-top).

          Of course he thought it meant ‘amused’. What staggered me was that our company solicitor – who you’d think would be literate – seemed to think the same.

        2. The most glaring popular misconception about languages seems to be that there are fixed “official” definitions of words that remain unchanged through time.

          1. Restive:
            My Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged), 1976, gives “restless” as the first definition of “restive.” it also gives as two (among other) synonyms to restive: “nervous, unquiet.”

      2. as unchanging as we’d like it to be

        Anyone who wants language to be unchanging should be required to speak in the teenage slang of their parents’ generation.

        1. No, in Middle English! Alas and weylawey! At least the double negative could be used with abandon!

      3. “Who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death – the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns . . . .”

        With what “cool” slang would that sentiment be expressed nowadays?

  10. As we would have said when I was a teen “Unreal!”

    My mother uses the word “terrific” all the time to describe things that are not at all terrifying.

  11. I propose an indefinite moratorium on the use of Niemöller’s quote, which is equally overused.

    That said, I would be very happy if “Stupefying” came back into fashion.

  12. When I edit what I write it’s largely a matter of deleting such overwrought words. I’m prone to the disease, but I fight it.

  13. A language maven friend of mine used to refer to words such as this as “atomic flyswatters”. I presume that meant words too powerful for their actual use.

  14. At some point awesome meant “invoking awe” and fantastic meant “difficult to believe” and now they both mean something else. Maybe in 100 years’ time words we use for other purposes now will become the superlative adjective e.g “I had a *supernatural* time at the party last night!” or perhaps “Martha your roast duck is simply *radioactive*”

  15. There are several people I’d justly call “amazing.” The Amazing Randi is, of course, one of them.

    It’s his well-established personal title. Plus — magic!!!

  16. Hate it when someone describes something as Sic .They says thats sic meaning they like it.Prefer dope well maybe.

    1. Even worse: the shit. “This music is the shit!” “That actress is the shit!” Yes, it’s a compliment.

  17. Personally, before using the word “awesome” I ask myself, “would Spicoli would find it so?”

  18. What ruined the word “amazing” for me was not so much its being the new “awesome,” but the way certain friends (wife’s friends, more accurately) deliver it as if they mean the original sense. For example, they would not say “my amazing friend Julie,” they would say “my friend Julie is amaaaayyyziiiing!” along with the hand gestures and looking at the sky.

    Does she levitate? No. Does lay golden eggs? No. Does she swing through the city on spider silk she spins herself? No.

    Then I might agree Julie is amazing, but she’s not amaaaayyyziiiing.

  20. I don’t like “like”
    “Awesome should be, like, really scary”

    Anyone using “slightly pregnant” or “very unique” should be disqualified for their qualification.

    But it’s not just the incoming ones, “brill” and “fab” sound stupid as well as dated.

    Oh, and get off the damned grass 🙂

      2. I’ve always had an antipathy towards the word “hubby.” As in “my hubby and I like to go on jaunts.” It makes me want to smash something.

        2. I’m also frequently annoyed by people who start referring to their spouses not by name but as “my wife” or “my husband.” Especially people whom I’ve known before they met said spouse.

          Before marriage: “Gotta run; that’s Suzie on the other line.”

          After marriage: “Gotta run; that’s my wife on the other line.”

          Somehow just seems dehumanizing to me….

          b&

          1. It depends entirely on whether the person you’re talking to knows who Susie is. Saying the “after marriage” version indicates provides some scale as to the importance of the call. “Susie”, might just leave a bunch of ambiguity… “Who’s Susie?” “Which Susie?”

          2. I was going to ask, before an accidental “return” submitted the comment, this question….

            Is the pre-marriage “Gotta run; that’s my girlfriend on the other line.” also dehumanizing? (leaving out the whole “girl/boy” aspect of the pre-marriage role label)

          3. I’m referring to an hypothetical Suzie whom I know as well as the person now referring to her as his wife; say, a couple whom I’ve socialized with for years.

            And, suddenly, Suzie becomes, “The Wife.”

            b&

          4. Well, I find “the wife” and “the little woman” equally obnoxious. But “my wife” (and “my husband”) don’t bother me at all. That, after all, is what my wife and I are to one another.

            Now, in the company of a friend or family member, I’d no doubt say “Michele” if I needed to identify who was calling me. But if I was with people who didn’t know her, I’d say “my wife” without being the least bit disrespectful.

          5. Well, I find “the wife” and “the little woman” equally obnoxious. But “my wife” (and “my husband”) don’t bother me at all. That, after all, is what my wife and I are to one another.

            Now, in the company of a friend or family member, I’d no doubt say “Michele” if I needed to identify who was calling me. But if I was with people who didn’t know her, I’d say “my wife” without being the least bit disrespectful.

          7. Huh? Whose wedding? My wedding? Don’t you think the wedding party would qualify as knowing who she is?

            Your question isn’t parsing.

          8. Sorry. Let me back up.

            You’ve known Jim since long before he met Suzie. When they get married, you’re one of the groomsmen. After the marriage, Jim starts calling Suzie, “my wife.”

            Would that not seem weird to you?

            b&

          9. That would seem a little odd, yes, unless there was some other “Susie” to confuse things. And assuming there’s nobody else around who might not know who Susie is. And assuming that Jim’s memory is good enough to remember I had been at his wedding.

          10. My mother once referred to my father [half-jokingly] as “the old ball-and-chain” when talking to a co-worker. She then got annoyed when the co-worker started calling him that: “How’s the old-ball-and-chain?” My mother said, “She has no right to insult my husband that way!” When I pointed out that she started it, she said “He’s my husband! I can call him that!” Yes, she was serious.

          11. I think your mother’s seriousness on this point isn’t unusual, Doug. I, for example, might well tell my brother to “stop being a ‘jaggov'” (giving it the Pittsburg pronunciation, as though it were a character in a Russian novel), but would take offense if an outsider did the same.

          12. If Jakov were a character in a Russian novel, he would also go by Jakov Jokovich (assuming he’s named after his father) and Jokodyna for when he is talking to his mother. 😀

          13. @Ken

            Yes, it’s quite common that we can refer to close relatives of ours in a mock-disparaging way that would be highly offensive if a third party used it.

            Not just people, possessions too – I can say of my car, “I’ll fire up the old heap” but if someone else called it an “old heap” I would be justifiably insulted.

        3. Ha ha, when you pair it with “jaunts” it sounds like something the Howells would say on Gilligan’s Island.

          3. You don’t want to know how many times I clicked on that broken “butter” link!

        2. Hunter Davies, I think, reported a chat between Lennon and McCartney in which He-Who-Is-Bigger-Than-Jesus warned the Pretty-Fab-One that ‘just’ is a meaningless place-holder in a pop lyric: ‘I just love her’ etc. was the idea. x

      3. Really? Consider the following two fragments:

        1) “The internet is no more? Just yesterday, I was posting my language peeves on it.”

        2) “The internet is no more? Yesterday, I was posting my language peeves on it.”

        Which one sounds more idiomatic? Do you really think they both convey exactly the same sense to the reader?

  21. I had a college professor who said that “fascinating” is a word that Johnny Carson used when he couldn’t think of anything better to say. (I’m quoting. I am on the whole a fan of Carson.)

    Same goes for awesome and amazing.

    1. That actually works if you do it in an Alan Rickman voice. It would sound sarcastic if he could get up enough enthusiasm.

          2. The Rickmeister showed he could also rock the pompous sarcasm in very precise French as the wine maven in Bottle Shock.

          3. Poor Alan Rickman, I feel his pain. I’ve complimented people & they’ve asked me if I’m making fun of them. I think they are just used to my sarcasm as I don’t think my voice sounds sarcastic.

          4. I think AR is great; I’d cast him in my movie, if I had one. He played against type — yet still managed to bring the full Rickman — as punk music impresario Hilly Kristal in GBGB.

            Diana, it sounds like people perceive you as operating at Sarc Level Two, or maybe even Three, according to the scale Tom Wolfe set out in I Am Charlotte Simmons (which is his worst novel, but still has its moments).

    2. […]“fascinating” is a word that Johnny Carson used when he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

      That was Spock!

    3. “Fascinating” is definitely talk-show-hostese. But I don’t think it can be laid off on Johnny; it’s got more of a Jack Paar feel to it.

  22. Is this my punishment for using the word “awesome” in a comment earlier in today’s Owl post?

    1. When we “pushed flies” it was the middle of the night with dozens of bottles – but hey, the students needed virgins the next day.

  28. I’m going to be a pedant. 🙂 The title should be “Not Everything is Amazing.” Some things are amazing.

  29. “DO NOT TELL ME THAT I SHOULD ACCEPT ALL CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE.”

    I also promise to stay off of your lawn 😉

    My pet peeve is the use of “incredible,” who’s original meaning is “not credible” as opposed to the current useage which is more akin to “remarkable”.

    Also, “bemused”. It means puzzled, but sounds like “amused” and is used that way by many authors. Better to use puzzled or amused if you mean either of those.

    1. Right – whenever someone says something like. “This is an incredible book! You really have to read it!”, I tend to respond, “Why would I waste time reading something that is incredible?” Of course I am guilty of saying it myself… and worse grammatical faux pas.

  30. “hero”, as in labeling every soldier, sailor, marine, etc. a hero, just for
    being in the military. What can we call those who have performed truly heroic acts? “Superheroes”? “Totally awesome, amazing, cool
    dudes, I mean, you know, like, you know…far out, man!”

    1. Yes, today hero is the same as employee of the month. I think you get a parking spot for that too.

    2. In I Heart Huckabees the funny scene with the religious family involves the dad calling the firefighter s hero and the way he gestures and says it is very good and very funny.

      1. Saying ‘I heart’ instead of ‘I love’. Aaagh!

        But for me the worst of the lot isn’t a word, it’s people who bracket words with the asterisk – sometimes a *single*, more often a **double** – to emphasise them.

        Please, people, italicise if you can, ‘apostrophise’ if you must, but leave the asterisk to denote footnotes.

        1. Asterisks have a long tradition of being used to indicate boldface where type changes are not supported. Similarly, underscores designate italics.

          The teacher assigned _War and Peace_ for the class to read.

          “All is fair in love *and* war.” [emphasis added]

          Those are understood to translate as:

          The teacher assigned War and Peace for the class to read.

          “All is fair in love and war.” [emphasis added]

          Cheers,

          b&

          1. So you’re telling me that the people I’m talking about are posting on the Internet using devices which don’t have apostrophe-, greater/lesser than-, or backslash keys?

          3. In my case I just don’t trust WordPress to interpret special characters in the way I expect it to. I can write HTML but is WordPress’s HTML the same as my HTML? Without a preview function it’s a bit of a lottery. Easier to play safe.

          4. It usually does but can be tiresome on a phone or iPad. I usually make the attempt but not always.

        2. That was another brilliant thing about that movie. It specifically used, “I Heart” because it is superficial and trendy.

          1. But when did people start pronouncing it “heart?” It started in the 70s with the slogan “I[heart symbol]NY” which everyone pronounced “I Love New York.” “Huckabees” was the first time that I heard people actually say “heart” instead of “love.”

          2. I have no idea who The Huckerbeesare, much less when they began speaking this abomination. I’d just like them to stop, if it’s not too much trouble.

            By the way, the ‘I heart’ motif goes far further back than the ’70s. I’ve seen it on Victorian-era embroidered love tokens such as cushions and pillow slips, often given by a woman to a loved one who was away from home for long periods, at war or at sea (and possibly both), as a forget-me-not.

            Similarly, the same sentimentality has probably been carved into trees and church pews, school desks and prison cell doors for centuries.

            But I’ve only been hearing the damned thing for a handful of years, so maybe in this instance it’s not too late to stop the rot.

          3. Oh, sure ♥ has a long history, but not in sentences as a substitute for “love”, surely?

            (Slightly OT, I’m reminded of an Alfred Bester [?] novel in which there were characters called @kins and S&nderson, prefiguring the contemporary practice of h8ing things, &c. It might seem asi9, but 4give and 4get, that’s what I say.)

            /@

          8. IIRC, “ampersand” comes from “and per se and”, describing “&” when it was recited with the alphabet.

            “… X, Y, Z, and, by itself, &”

            So, you’re righter than you might have thought.

            /@

          9. I’d heard it before then, I think sometimes in a way to move those slogans and in another just to explain how to “spell” it.

        4. There are whole mark-up formats based on those conventions (off the top of my head, I can count, Markdown, Org mode and Restructured Text among others), which appear to be older than HTML and other associated mark-up languages.

          There is at least very good reason for the use of these conventions in casual writing: the markup is much less intrusive than HTML, and hence is much more readable for a human even when rendering is not available. It can also be translated easily into more powerful mark-up formats such as LaTeX or HTML when required (see, e.g., pandoc).

  31. Yes, sweet is almost worse than cool. They apply to everything and nothing.

    Generally when described as awesome you are being lied too. And how was that sex?

  32. My ex-boyfriend, who is British, used to say “brilliant”. But I think he really meant “awesome”.

    3. My grandfather was so abstemious in his compliments, that when one could pull from him a “That was okay,” then one knew that one had done quite well.

  33. I never fall into the trap of using a lazy term like “amazing” to mean “nice.” Long ago I learned to say “plusgood!” Or, if the person is really nice (quite rare, actually), I say “doubleplusgood!” I think I read it somewhere.

  35. What irritates me more than word change is the shift in some English accents that I have noticed over the last 20 years.

    I’m 54. When I was young everyone knew that no living Cockney pronounced ‘very’ as ‘werry’ , like Dickens’ Sam Weller. So the Cockney accent had changed in that 100 years.

    But now there is a real vowel shift in the Cockney accent which I hear as a melding of white, Caribbean and Indian sub-continent. And even a consonant shift, which I think is influenced by New York Hispanic. So that ‘do’ becomes something like ‘tso’ as in ‘tsar’ but formed in that Hispanic way that lowers the tongue in the mouth from the roof more towards the middle and leaves the ‘s’ sound as a remnant.

    In singing you notice that young pop vocalists are becoming more free and easy with the vowel sound so that the word can become unrecognisable even when the diction is perfectly clear. George Ezra genuinely appears to want to mangle words so that they become unintelligible, but nevertheless interesting sonically. I’m all about that bass, no ‘trouble’. Does she not care that she fluffs the punchline? This is all a matter of degree but it feels to me as if an accent change is really taking off.

    I whine about it and they make their millions. But I don’t care. I’m right! x

    1. I can’t help but think how annoyed The Highlander felt living all those years in so many countries and witnessing all those language shifts.

  37. “Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”
    “The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”
    “Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”
    “I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”
    “Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”

    Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey

    1. NA, in which ‘baseball’ appears for the first time.

      Trivia time: what links Jane Austen’s Catherine Morland and Stephen Hawking? x

        1. You will have to give me the answer to that one.
          I wonder how Catharine’s baseball relates to the modern game? I seem to remember that she also played cricket.

          1. Felicity Jones: played Catherine Morland in the BBC’s Northanger Abbey and Jane Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’. I told you it was trivial.

            I don’t think we know whether Austen’s baseball is modern baseball. The list of games is early on in the novel, I think, at the Morland family home. x

    3. Henry is already a little late. “Nice” once meant “precise, exact” and referred to judgements and measurements, and still occasionally does. Fortunately, new words come along to served the purposes of the old, but this constant flux is tedious.

    1. Actually, when you think about it, advertising is probably responsible for lots of word degradation.

  39. I can’t decide if the changing of language is terrible, terrific, or tremendous. Awful, or awesome? Astounding? Stunning?

  40. If they mean seriously awesome, then they should just put literally or for realz this time after it.

    “Awesome, for realz this time.”

    or…

    “Awesome. Literally.”

  42. Apocryphal tale of Samuel (Dr.) Johnson (of dictionary fame):

    Mrs Johnson (on finding husband in bed with maid): “Mr. Johnson, I am surprised”.

    Samuel Johnson: “No, my dear, we are surprised, you are amazed.”

    2. Johnson never married. It is usually attributed to Noah Webster,”The earliest discovered instance was printed in a newspaper in 1896. The raconteur was Chauncey Depew, a famous after-dinner speaker:

      At a recent dinner in New York a new story was sprung by Chauncey M. Depew. Speaking of the importance of humor, Mr. Depew declared that Noah Webster, though a lexicographer, was humorist. “His wife,” Chauncey went on to say, “caught him one day kissing the cook.

      “‘Noah,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’m surprised!’

      “‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘you have not studied carefully our glorious language. It is I who am surprised. You are astounded.’”

      See more at the Quote Investigator –
      http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/05/17/dictionary-kiss/

      2. Aha! A classic example of ‘Murican sexual repression. Johnson went to bed with his maid, Webster had to be content with merely kissing the cook. 😉

  44. I have stopped reading Facebook stories that begin with, ‘…and when they opened the box what they found was amazing.’ Superlatives are overused.

  45. “Get off my lawn! It is … not amazing …”

    Nope, doesn’t quite cut it.

    Seriously, given that languages evolves, how can this be a problem?* Those words would have emerged, potentially to replace earlier devalued words, and was somehow imbued with “value”.

    It will happen again. Evolution, it is amazing.

    *I admit to having been taken aback when people started to use “… infinitely more/large/old…”. It rubbed my sense of mathematical-logical value the wrong way.

    But I gave up when my astrobiology professor used it. :-/

        1. I suppose I don’t. My son loves LCK, so I’m off somehow. I understand what Louis’ intentions are for his punchlines, I just don’t think he pulls it off. Most of what I’ve seen from his is self deprecating vulgarity. Meh. I think it might be one unexpected disadvantage of having been around for more than half a century. I’ve witnessed and experienced a lot of humor in that time, so sometimes it’s hard to pull off the ‘shock’ of a good punchline if its not truly shocking. Or, perhaps I just don’t get it.

  47. Let’s leave ‘awesome’ to the young ‘uns, then. I resort to ‘awe-inspiring’ when something is totally awesome.

    I wonder if this language ‘superlativeness’ could be a symptom of overuse of technology by the younger generation. I could see myself being surprised by many a mundane thing, if I’ve been cooped up in a cave all year, and then I venture out into the light. Everything would seem awesome and more vivid and alive!

  49. I recently read an interesting article at utne.com called “Language Evolves: No Need to Panic.”

  50. Ceiling Cnut, you’re absolutely right that overuse of superlatives greatly hampers communication. Awesome and amazing are two of many words that have lost their, um, descriptive power. So what? More exactly, how do you propose to stamp out the practice?

  51. This bewilders me. I know many people who seem to live life in a constant state of bewilderment — I find that amazing.

  52. Last year, some brilliant linguist at my university came up with a new slogan for the university:

    Real. Amazing.

    Yes. That’s. The. Punctuation. They. Used.

    Then last week the slogan became

    Be. Real. Amazing.

    I supposed it to be some sort of tribute to the great poet Rod McKuen.

  53. truly awesome things, like the Big Bang

    Eh. The Big Bang is so last century. These days Big Bangs are a dime a dozen; you can’t turn around without tripping over one.

  54. I agree with the post that wanted to revive neat. I’m in favor of using swell again!

  55. Well, if you don’t like “amazing” then you should totes be happy to learn that some people avoid misusing it by replacing it with “amazeballs”.

  57. “It’s now used as a synonym for ‘nice’…”

    While you’re rolling back “amazing,” it would be nice to roll back “nice” to its formal meaning, as in a “nice distinction” or a “nice question.”

  59. My pet hate in this regard is “massive” for things that have little or no mass, such as stormclouds, fires (inevitably “blazes”) and craters.

    1. That’s false pedantry, I’m afraid, Hugh. “Mass” – which comes from the Greek for “barley cake” – meant and still means “a coherent, typically large body of matter with no definite shape”, which fits clouds perfectly.

      /@

      1. “That’s false pedantry”

        I think you’ll find that it is “amazingly” hard to find comments on this thread to which that complain does not apply.

  60. “Passionate”.

    Every single frickin’ employment ad HAS to have ‘passionate’ in it somewhere.

    “The successful applicant will be passionate about inventory tracking and asset identification”.

    “We need an enterprising, self-motivated individual who is passionate about rodent control”.

    I would like to recklessly offer a small prize of a gratuitous split infinitive to anyone who can come up with the most bizarre example of ‘passionate’.

      1. Hmmm…I don’t find that so hard to believe about morticians…

        infiniteimprobabilit, your examples cracked me up! 😀

          2. Managed to find it anyway. “We are passionate about bolts”.

            Speaking for myself, I *like* bolts. There’s something very satisfying about a well-made bolt. So for me at least it lacks the degree of bathos necessary to make it a winner.

  61. JERRY, YOU SHOULD NOT ACCEPT ALL CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE!
    😉
    All language corrupts – absolute language corrupts absolutely.

    I totally agree like, &, like, the word that I, like, dislike, is… like. Eschew it.

    And another phrase I hate while we are at it – ‘fit for purpose’! grrrrr…

    2. And where “literally” means the opposite of literally:

      “It literally blew my mind.”
      “She literally wiped the floor with her opponent.”
      “My heart literally sank.”

    1. I’d be fine with a total moratorium on “Amazing Grace” at least until the word “amazing” has gone out of fashion, and maybe forever.

  66. As a former Marine my go to adjective is ‘outstanding’.

    This is an outstanding post, garnering over 200 comments.

  69. As my daughter the English major remarked when a friend tried to convince her that grammatical errors were okay because language evolves and we no longer use the same English Shakespeare used, “but, who are YOU to change the English language?”

    1. “but, who are YOU to change the English language?”

      The answer to that is rather obvious: a user of the language. A language exists because of its users, and evolves in the way they (as a group) want it to. Unlike mathematics, it is not an elaborate timeless edifice constructed on an unshakeable foundation of logic (this is especially true of “the English language”). It is unfortunate that far too many people (including, it seems, language majors) do not seem to “get” this simple idea.

      You might like this post by Mark Liberman. The post describes the consternation of John Trevisa, a 14th century defender of “the English language”, who had the following to say on the subject of the corruption of language (no, this is not a joke):

      … by comyxtioun and mellynge firste wiþ Danes and afterward wiþ Normans, in meny thynges þe contray longage is apayred, and som vseþ straunge wlafferynge, chiterynge, harrynge, and garrynge grisbayting

      1. My daughter was responding, of course, to the use of Shakespeare’s name in defense of changing language; how, indeed, could anyone compare himself or herself with Shakespeare? I am more than willing to grant that language does change (I would never put on a napron instead of an apron) but changes in English usage should enhance communication, not restrict it.

        2. I cannot say whether your daughter’s correspondents were comparing themselves with Shakespeare or not. But bringing in Shakespeare certainly buttresses the point that breaking zombie rules so beloved of some pedants has never been an impediment to actual communication.

          Interestingly, some of these zombie rules were actually invented to belittle great writers and poets. For example, it seems that the “rule” about not having prepositions at the end of sentences was popularized by John Dryden in order to argue that he was a better poet than Ben Jonson.

          1. As I see it, any change that decreases our ability to communicate meaning debases the language; if everything is “awesome,” for example, then nothing is truly awe inspiring. Shakespeare’s greatness lies in, among many other achievements, expanding the English language, creating more words and more expressions with which to communicate meaning. Any change that enhances our ability to communicate is welcome.

          2. “…if everything is “awesome,” for example, then nothing is truly awe inspiring.”

            Really? What is preventing you from saying “That is truly awe inspiring!”?

            Language is a marvelous thing. As it changes people find ways to express themselves. Even if all we want to do is grumble about language changing.

          5. You concede that among other things, Shakespeare’s greatness lies “creating more words”. Yet, many commentators above (with whom I believe you would be inclined to agree) are denouncing exactly this phenomenon. Many of Shakespeare’s “more words” were “created” by simply using an existing word in a different grammatical function (e.g. a noun as a verb). Yet we have heard countless arguments about it is “just wrong” to use “medal” or “gift” as verbs.

            This is why invoking Shakespeare is valid: very often people who are protesting “change” in the language haven’t really thought there position through, and the reference to Shakespeare might bring it to their notice that they might be more in agreement with the dreaded clan of “descriptivists” than they think.

          6. PS to mgmt: I mistakenly posted this comment earlier with a mistyped email and username. Please delete the earlier comment (which thankfully went into moderation because of the mistyped email)

            You concede that among other things, Shakespeare’s greatness lies “creating more words”. Yet, many commentators above (with whom I believe you would be inclined to agree) are denouncing exactly this phenomenon. Many of Shakespeare’s “more words” were “created” by simply using an existing word in a different grammatical function (e.g. a noun as a verb). Yet we have heard countless arguments about it is “just wrong” to use “medal” or “gift” as verbs.

            This is why invoking Shakespeare is valid: very often people who are protesting “change” in the language haven’t really thought there position through, and the reference to Shakespeare might bring it to their notice that they might be more in agreement with the dreaded clan of “descriptivists” than they think.

          9. I guess my view, Joyce, is that your ability to communicate isn’t diminished.

            We all have our linguistic bug-a-boos. Part of me wants to throttle everyone who uses “less” where I think they should use “fewer”. But the (I think wiser) part of me wants to throttle myself for bothering about it. Communication isn’t hampered except to the extent I let my own annoyance get in the way.

      2. Thanks for the link. An amusing bit of Englysch.

        On the other hand, I feel that the very slow and gradual change of spelling over several hundred years is a quite different case from the rapid devaluing of the meanings of words in a matter of several generations, which is what Prof. CC was talking about. One is not as unsettling as the other.

          2. The content of that adorable “Englysch” passage should allay your fears that “rapid devaluing of the meanings of words in a matter of several generations” is a recent phenomenon. The irony of the 14th century passage is that it is complaining against how the language is changing (for the worse, of course; it is always “for the worse” for language defenders) so much because of “recent” outside influences.

          3. It is thought that Chaucer, in The Canterbury Tales writing in the late 1300s, refers to a related point about English dialect. Using the mixture of Kentish and Midland dialects, he is thought at one point – I forget where – to have pastiched the Northern dialect of the writer of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, which slightly predates Chaucer’s great work. Chaucer’s dialect became far more influential in the development of modern English, that of the author of ‘Sir Gawain…’ much less so. x

          4. OK if that is the intended point, no, my fear is not that rapid changes in meaning are a recent phenomenon. I know they aren’t. My fear is that rapid changes are not quite as OK as such gradual ones as illustrated by the 14th century passage. And I don’t understand when people say “They’re always complaining” as if that showed the complaints to have no merits. No doubt things will be back to an equilibrium (perhaps a different one) and be fine in the long run, but there could be short-term inconveniences along the way, such as not having a short word for something truly amazing.

          5. @gillsj

            Actually I think that it does show that the complaints are not as serious as the complainers think. If indeed it was true that people using words in hyperbolic or sarcastic fashions actually hampered communication, then figures of speech would not have survived. In this case, it is mostly clear from context (as much as hyperbole and sarcasm are clear from context) what sense someone is using the word “amazing” in. Hence, I do think that your fear that such usage means “a short word for something truly amazing” is not available is unfounded.

  70. Awesome, amazing, stupefying! Pfffft! Such warping of wonderfully useful words pales into insignificance when compared to what’s happened to “unique,” which has been demoted from “one-of-a-kind” to “slightly unusual,” or “different than anything I’ve seen in…like, oh, you know…the past 15 minutes.”

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