The Arbitrary ChuckJerry: Two Words That Should Be Used More Often

Friday, April 14, 2006

Two Words That Should Be Used More Often

My opinion really matters, especially when it comes to language usage. I'm like the William Saffire of the blogosphere. So here are two words that need to be used more often.

Penultimate - the phrase "second to last" is used often enough that people really should be aware of the one word, penultimate, that would replace those three words. It's also much less bulky to say penultimate rather than second to last in most cases. The latin roots, incidentally, paene-almost and ultimus-last, make the literal translation "almost last" which is cool too.

Biotch - really any time you oppose someone's opinion either on a serious level or in a jocular way if you add "biotch" to the end it really adds emphasis. For proof of this declaration watch the next episode of 24 on Monday night and every time there's a confrontation of big egos who know what's best for the country just add "biotch" to the end of their little speech. It really works. Other acceptable forms would be "bee-itch" and an occasional "bizz-natch", though the latter should really be used sparingly.

# posted by ChuckJerry : 4/14/2006 09:52:00 AM

Comments:

If there's not already, there should be a category for words that are not quite onomatopoeias but are nonetheless still just sound apppropriate for what they are.

(As a sidenote, I had to look up how to spell onomatopoeias, as I realize I had no idea.)

For instance, onomatopoeias are just cool: snap, buzz, hum, burp, crackle, etc...

But there are other words such as:

Brisk. The word brisk is said briskly, and it just fits well: "Wow, the wind is cold and brisk today." The word itself seems to encapsulate the feeling of 'brisk'.

Similarly,

Cool. The word is cool itself. When you say it, it's hard to not say it in a cool manner. It ends with a smooth vowel sound and syllable. "C'mon, Yolanda, what's Fonzie like?!? Correctamundo, he's cool."

I hope this makes sense.

As a footnote to this comment, for email among my group of friends for years (I'd say from like 18 to 23 years old) I would always write "Anotherwards" instead of "In other words" and then when finally asked about it I had to play it off like I knew it wasn't a word all that time.

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