Monday, December 15, 2014

Gobbledygook (6)


Here’s an informative but also entertaining article titled “12 Horrible Gobbledygook Words We Reluctantly Accepted.” It appeared in mental_floss, a great online source of intelligent humor.

An excerpt:

“In 1883, a journalist named Godfrey Turner went on an awesome rampage against purist, writing, ‘What a word! We have here positively the only instance of an attempt to make a noun, by this clumsy inflection, direct out of a raw adjective.’ He wasn’t done with it yet though, going on to write in another publication, ‘whoever first committed to the legibility of black and white that vicious noun-substantive has, it may be hoped, lived to repent a deed that offends forever against verbal purity … among all blundering conceits of modern phraseology, [it] stands distinguished from its misshapen fellows by an unapproachable singularity of malformation.’ ” (Italic and boldface added.)

The Takeaway: Have a great day.

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