Weighty language and life Issues

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday March 15, 2022 06:00

I know most of you might feel using ‘of size’ as an adjective to describe my shape or my out-of-shape situation means I have taken a restraining order against grammar and semantics. But the world has changed and words like ‘fat’ are only acceptable when they come before cake or bank account.

For my New Year’s resolution, I thought about going on a diet and exercising regularly, but I think I’ll just sit around, chug half and half, and demean complete strangers and health doctors on the internet about their lack of body positivity.

Truth is body positivity is actually code for ‘to hell with science because being lazy and eating like a garbage disposal is trendy’. I might stay there a bit until my physician starts benefitting from my ‘of size’ body. That is the point where most of us start to worry and try and do something and take that long, arduous and expensive trek to reverse the ‘of size’ condition. Thanks to The Politically Correct Police using some words is now registering very high readings on the Sacrilege Scale. It is amazing how language keeps morphing faster than computer language. The modern lexicon keeps changing even though more than half the population is intellectually lazy and creatively bankrupt.

For example, let’s say you hear someone saying ‘throw shade’ and you expect some respite from the blazing BW sun you are out of luck. This actually means to show contempt of something.

There’s also another word, chillax, which seems to be a cross between chill and relax. Why does any right thinking person need to fuse two words that mean almost the same thing and come up with a word that also means the same thing.

This is a one step forward and one step back process that can never be helpful in the Ukraine-Russian war. I was a teacher once and I doubt if I would have taken too kindly to being told to chillax by a student. I’d haul out the riot act complete with its attachments and appendices.

Ghost used to be a word associated more with eerie supernatural evil spirits but nowadays you can have a girlfriend who is ghosting you by not responding to your communication. You can imagine the confusion when you hear it for the first time.

Baecations are a thing nowadays. These words, ‘baecations’ and a ‘thing’ are yet some more new words from the Artificial Insemination Word Plant. Baecation usually means when you go on vacation with a sweetheart and you post that on social media. You cannot say something like ‘holidaying with darling’ anymore especially if you are a Facebook disciple.

How boring! I am sure Facebook has a special filter to remove phrases like ‘holidaying with darling’ and replace that with a simple, funky baecation because the former is not Facebooky enough.

I personally am not too sure of the millennial definition of ‘a thing’ though I have used it quite a few times in a bid to prove my Y2K compliance. But it is a thing nowadays to use the phrase ‘a thing’. If this type of language defacing was a person, I would absolutely commit the grossest of manslaughters upon those that I feel are not deserving to be on the lexicon. We are currently under siege from defaced language and new words and it might seem I am on a literary revenge mission. But I am not! I admire and abhor them in equal measure.

Hopefully many will learn from this and make it their personal Bible and worship me as your new Wordsmith God. Trumpet blown!

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