Jennifer Moody

Last week, I talked about words and phrases that drive people crazy. Larry, your comment about “due to the fact of” reminded me of my journalism adviser in college, who hated reading “due to” in any form. It was BECAUSE, or the paper automatically lost lots of points!Side note: Same adviser also hated the incorrect use of “entitled,” as in, “The book was entitled, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.’” A person may be entitled to do something, but a book/poem/song/speech is TITLED. Thanks to him, I now cringe every time I hear Garrison Keillor misuse it when he talks about “A poem entitled (blank)” on “The Writer’s Almanac.”

(While we’re on the subject, same adviser hated the misspelling of “adviser.” The preferred spelling is with an ‘e,’ not an ‘o.’ See, Dave, I remembered!)

We can still get into a good rant on the words and phrases we hate. But I promised to talk about cool words, too, so let’s do that first.

We had a story in our paper today about new words in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster. Weigh in: What do you think about “ginormous,” as a mashup of “gigantic” and “enormous”? In 2005, it was named “favorite word not in the dictionary” by people who visited the dictionary publisher’s Web site.

My particular favorite, not-in-the-dictionary word is “wordherder,” which I first heard from a photographer friend of mine. He used it to mean reporters, editors, authors, poets, and pretty much everyone else who uses words to accomplish what he does with pictures.

Another photographer says his favorite not-in-the-dictionary word is “slummery,” which he uses to describe neighborhoods that are, shall we say, less than kept up.

Those photographers. Weird bunch. Imagine using a picture when you could use 1,000 lovely words.

Tweet This Post