I suppose, when I think about it, this web-site is all about words. Stories, comments, poems. Even the pictures might conjure up a word or two. Words are precious. They can do harm or good – depends how you use them. They can be wasted (Judging by the blizzard of spam that comes this way to be automatically dumped straight into the trash bin). They are often misused …
Engage
What politicians and bureaucrats rattle out in their sound-bites. If only they would talk to people, instead. That is what we used to call it, anyway!
Front-line
A pompous and insincere term, used when referring to the lower-paid, overworked masses at the bottom of the pyramid. The faceless and the graceless in the eyes of the makers and breakers. See how they care for the foot soldiers, as long as they do not have to leave their chateaux and find themselves bogged down in the muck with bullets flying around. Rarely in human history has a single general stood down in order that one single person at the ‘front line’ might get a better deal.
Some gems from local radio …
Doolz Airport, near Washington DC. We would call it Dulles Airport
Genre-lisation. A faux-French version of the more familiar ‘generalisation’
… from the part of the world that brought you the ‘bootiful’ Bernard Mathews and his turkeys, why oh why do they pronounce ‘acoustic’ as a-kyew-stick? Or ‘Holland’ as ‘Olland’?
Mind you, when ‘door’ rhymes with ‘law’, and most songs (for want of a better term) have not a hint of rhyme at all, am I being too fussy?
I do hate ordering a ‘berger’. Every other ‘begger’ in the world can manage to understand the word ‘burger’. And not all burgers need cheese.