Category Archives: Special Uses

Peccadillos

When the English language was created by God (around 4,000) years ago, He never meant for words like this to infect His perfect creation, which is in the image of His own language. But then in the 16th century, some lame-o needed attention and started talking about “peccadillos” when “flaws” or “small sins” would work [...]

Velvet / Velveteen

I have posted these together because they both suffer the same problem: poets love them. And not just hack poets, either. Respectable, even professional poets spew “velveteen” like it was “gossamer”. I have no idea what the poetic obsession with these words are. Velvet is a fabric. At one point, it was a beautiful, luxurious, [...]

Sanguine

This word does not deserve to exist. In the US, everyone learns it when studying for the SATs. It has no other usefulness in our language than tripping up vacuous high school juniors. And that’s a pretty shitty life for any word. The problem with this word is that it sounds nothing like its meaning. [...]

Aubergine

Okay, I get it. You think you’re better than everyone else. Only a pleb would dare use such lowbrow words as “eggplant”. You like to pretend you can speak French because you took a class in college and now you have some tapes. But you’re in America now. And in America, people who try to [...]

Brouhaha

Perhaps this word was considered clever in medieval France (from where supposedly it originates) but anyone who uses this word today is, simply put, asking for pain. There is just no excuse for using this word. It’s not funny. It never was funny and no matter how many times you say it, will never be [...]