Modern life is rubbish

[cosmolinguist]

You know, I’d like to tell you that Andrew is being perfectly supportive and wonderful about my new relationship. I really would. However there’s one major problem.

He and Stu get along marvelously; they immediately get talking about Daleks and what it’s like to be in a band in Manchester and all kinds of... specialist subjects, shall we say, of theirs. He’s been open and honest about everything someone getting into a relationship with me. It’s very impressive.

But there’s still one problem. It was unexpected, sure, but it’s big and it’s getting worse.

Every time Andrew hears my phone beep these days, he’s accusing me of sexting.

Even to type the word makes me cringe. It’s so awful. It’s so abominably bad. I mean, usually I’m all for language being used however people want to use it, and I appreciate the clever and useful things that dour prescriptivists would shun.

But this I cannot handle. Even if Andrew tells me, as he often does with glee in his voice as he watches me physically recoil from the vile utterance, that it is a word because it’s been added to the OED, it is abhorrent.

If he is right about the OED, the English language really has jumped the shark.

(The fact that my texts, to boyfriends or otherwise, do not contain any sexual words and I can’t even take pictures which is what I think the word was invented for anyway, is a distant second in my protests, but I figure it’s worth pointing out here anyway.)

Comments

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Aversion to certain words is a known phenomenon (http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/004835.html). I can think of a few that make me recoil in horror (the one you mention is close).

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I've written about this before; I rather like to witness people's incandescent feelings about words they dislike, which always seems to be stronger than their fondness for words they do like...

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

And it's not in your actual OED anyway (I just looked online). Collins, shurely...

[cosmolinguist]

And it's not in your actual OED anyway

That's what I said! I know I don't know as much of the intricacies of that revered dictionary as I did when I was a dorky linguistics student, but I knew there was no way on Earth such a thing would be allowed into yer proper OED so quickly.

Thank you for your help in proving him wrong and restoring my faith in my beloved English language, as these are both things that mean a lot to me. :)

[pylonography.livejournal.com]

Although sexting is a perfectly cromulent word, one which embiggens my spirit, it is not in the OED as dyddgu rightly points out, however snollygoster is, which embiggens my spirit further.

[innerbrat]

Andrew should be suitably annuspeptic, phrasmodic and compunctuous about suggesting it was, and for all the pericombulation it's causing for his wife,

Holly, please accept my most enthusiastic contrafliblarities on your new boyfriend.

[cosmolinguist]

You are my new favorite person, and the enthusiastic contrafliblarities have almost totally undone the damage Andrew (and my, ahem, "friends" here) has done on this subject.

[cosmolinguist]

Just so you don't start calling me a Hollygoster...

[tartful-dodger.livejournal.com]

And now others shall do likewise. :P

[cosmolinguist]

I HATES YOU EVEN MORE!

[cosmolinguist]

I HATES YOU!

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I did not realise you were polyamorous - glad it works out for you.

It's a horrid word.

[cosmolinguist]

I am indeed. I have been married to andrewhickey for four years (in a couple of weeks it will be, anyway), and I've been with shinydan for many months now, and with doctorstewie since yesterday. :)

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

W00t!!!

[innerbrat]

I KNOW. Mixing latin and greek roots like that. Polyamory should be ASHAMED of itself.

Now, I'm getting back to watching the teleophthalmos.

[cosmolinguist]

Polyamory has all kinds of reasons it should be ashamed of itself, but this should be near the top of the list.

(You're really outdoing yourself today. You'll be my favorite person FOREVER at this rate!)

[doctorstewie.livejournal.com]

*Is stealing word Teleopthalmos*

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

"the English language has jumped the shark"

And henceforth, we shall all speak Klingonese Or Klingonaase, if we all get sucked into an alternate universe in which cul-de-sac fictons rule.

I'm ahead of the curve since I speak German, so gargling while I talk is already an ingrained habit. :p