Some words added to dictionaries not ‘awesome’

Some words added to dictionaries not ‘awesome’
By Mary Lou Sartor

We received very little snowfall here up until now. Regardless of the inconvenience and extra work; much beauty is associated with freshly fallen snow. I no longer create angels in the snow.

My wings have dropped some feathers and I can’t gain any lift. People here might talk and call that action, at my age, something far less than awesome.

I won’t say a snowfall is awesome. The centuries-old, totally overworked adjective is not an “in” word now. After listening to winners of the Oscars and Emmys and others give brief, long and sometimes tasteless acceptance speeches; the overused words like awesome and amazing becomes tiresome. God and mother were not mentioned as often and they are the most amazing of them all.

Most of us have a word-hoard in store, but it does not hurt to clean house of the least desirable ones and add some new and better choices in the mix.

For instance, I had to cast away the word raunchy years ago. My mother thought it was vulgar.

Raunchy means slovenly, dirty, obscene and smelly. I used it to describe my worn-out tennis shoes a couple of times and I lent it to my little sister's ears once. The little seven-letter word caused such a stink at our old fat-legged table it has been jailed in my vocabulary’s store, out of reach of my thinking cap for many years. I gave it a little space in this article today. That ‘bad’ word won’t come out of my mouth again Mom - ever.

In 2005, the rap star BG’s album “Chopper City in the Ghetto came out. The business-savvy fellow remarked that he wished he had patented the term, for the reason of profit from its extensive use. B.G. added that he used the term to describe their jewelry.

Several Cadillac Escalade billboards and magazine advertisements used the term Bing- Bling to promote their expensive vehicles. Even wine coolers carried the name MD 20/20, also Mad Dog market a flavor called Bling Bling Blue Raspberry.

The folks at Merriam Webster saw the need to officially add the term and several other words to their English dictionary (July 2006). I think it sounds less than awesome and rather dirty like the word raunchy.

Some dictionary experts decided to take the sting out of buckshot and decided to drop it from its pages. Bling Bling is still in use.

Now we are using Covid-related terms. I think we are more than ready for those words to drop out of sight and take the virus with them. That would be awesome. Just saying…

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