I am so sick of the word unprecedented.

It’s just one of those words that people use to try and sound smart. I hate it. I’m so tired of it.

Sarah Palin’s scrutiny is unprecedented?

The U.S. bail-out bill is unprecedented?

What isn’t unprecedented these days?

I hate the word.

Categories: Fun with words
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I have a new favourite word, it’s floccinaucinihilipilification, once again that’s floccinaucinihilipilification (click the links for samples on how to pronounce it.

You can read about floccinaucinihilipilification here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floccinaucinihilipilification.

If you’re too lazy to do that, here’s the definition:

“the act of describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation”.

Well, okay then.

Categories: Fun with words
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I’m pretty bad with language, but something hit me last night.

Sometimes, it’s good to have ‘more’ of something than a ‘new’ something. Even if in the end it means the same thing.

For example, rather than saying, “I have made some new friends!” you might want to say, “I have made more friends lately!” The first sentence can be misinterpreted by people to mean that you’ve replaced old friends with shinier, newer ones who are more fun, which might not be the intended consequence.

If you say ‘more!’ then it indicates you’re getting additional items of an already good thing.

Categories: Fun with words
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I get so much spam, and the intentional spelling mistakes they put in to bypass filtering makes me do a double-take sometimes.

Today I got some legitimate e-mail, and I nearly thought of hitting the ‘Junk’ button in my mail client (the excellent Thunderbird, btw) because the product name in it wasn’t an english word. I get so many funny spellings of real words, that when I see a misspelling (for trademark reasons I’m guessing) of anything, I think it’s spam.

I’m probably getting a couple hundred spam messages a day between my 4 regularly used personal mailboxes – work’s filter does a good job, and only lets through a message or two a day.

Categories: Fun with words
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1. Save-A-Center

Ever walked into a Dominion? ‘Save-a-center’ my foot

Categories: Fun with words
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Overcite, Oversite, Oversight. Only one of these is a real word, I’m pretty sure. But I think all should be.

1. Overcite: to refer to something too often. As in, “This is a classic case of overcite, you can only quote Noam Chomsky 8 times per paper in a first-year poly-sci course.”

2. Oversite: to look over a site. “I’m the site supervisor, my job is oversite of the whole entire site.”

3. Oversight: too have your perspective set too far you look over an object. “I was looking for the grocery store, but due to my oversight I ended up in Halifax instead.”

Categories: Fun with words
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