Eli Amdur wrote, well, an awesome article on how unamazing many people’s word skills are (“Why is Everything Either ‘Amazing’ or ‘Awesome’?” September 26, 2024). I heartily second his sentiments on how very sadly underused our extraordinary language is. English has changed over the centuries and then changed again. Sometimes I wonder whether folks in Chaucer’s day shook their heads at how the young were misusing the language.
However, Mr. Amdur’s point is other than that. People underuse our language. Perhaps it is a result of social media, with words reduced to almost nothing at all, tysm. Or truncated, examples being inspo, vacay and convo.
As a true lover of language, I find it both perplexing and worrisome. I think that people are no longer able to articulate what they are feeling in a cogent way. “Use your words,” the early childhood teachers used to say. Today, you will hear that someone was, like, weird. Like.
I don’t like it at all.
