Food For Thought

Irregardless is not a word. Unless of course by irregardless you actually mean full of regard then go ahead with your double negative self.

Remaining in the realm of the American Lexicon, I learned a new word today:

Bravura:
1: a musical passage requiring exceptional agility and technical skill in execution 2 : a florid brilliant style 3 : a show of daring or brilliance.

Why is it that words like bravura, describing exceptional brilliance, are so seldom used but I hear the "word" irregardless at least 3 times a week. To be fair I didn't actually hear 'bravura', I read, it in an movie review for Indiana Jones. Apparently bravura only happens in the movies.

Now perhaps I am being myopic in assuming that my day to day vocab exposure is somehow representative of larger society (I was raised by a mom who referred to large books as tomes so there is room for bias here). So how about this, count up how many times you hear words like irregardless or see a lot spelled 'alot' (by people older than 12) and then count how many times you heard words like bravura or pablum.

Now despite my ire at lazy, incorrect English, I do love love love idioms. Idioms and movie quotes are linguistic heaven to me. So when I came upon this web site (and by came upon it, i mean Liz sent it to me to explain her father's term Frog Strangler) I was giddy with new word joy:

http://www.jargondatabase.com/default.aspx

Its a virtual treasure trove of nutty words and sayings. Sean you'll be happy to know that 'Value Add', 'Take Away', and 'Level Set' are all in there but sadly no 'Paradigm Shift'. One of my personal favorites is Catty Whompus, which means: something that is very out of place in it's location. Can also mean a situation that is messed up.

I have been trying to work it into daily conversation but I haven't had much luck. Let me know if you can.

In case you were wondering, a Frog Strangler is how you describe a large amount of rain in a small amount of time.