Comments on: Wrong: Exaggeflation

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:28:19 +0000

One word…”Blee.”

By: Sandra Dodd

Sandra Dodd — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:51:31 +0000

(Doh! cannot edit past comments. Thing not things. You can have your gale spelled gail if I can have my old things…)

By: Sandra Dodd

Sandra Dodd — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:56:36 +0000

Had you not disparaged Flight of the Conchords I wouldn’t have asked whether “gail-force winds” are a British thing of which Americans know nothing. Probably something lovely. Something brilliant.

Americans might have awesome lives but they don’t go around saying just any old things is brilliant or lovely.

By: Brian Woods

Brian Woods — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:53:53 +0000

I think the problem is you are hanging around with the sort of people who would go to a Flight of the Conchords concert. If you were around normal, rational people, you would notice this happening much less.

It’s a bit like going to a carnival and complaining that America has a troubling fascination with deep fried foods, and you know this because of the deep fried Oreos and Snickers bars.

By: S. Melville

S. Melville — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:40:20 +0000

ah, this is a peeve of mine, though I’m guilty of it. Everything is ‘epic’ these days, though I do say that rather tongue-in-cheek. Hard for that tone to come across on the internet, but . . . all my friends ARE mind readers, so I don’t have too much to worry about there.
What does kind of — well, really — make me angry, is how ‘depressed’ and ‘phobic’ (or phobia) have been terribly dumbed down this same way. If my facebook status said ‘I’m so depressed right now’, I’d get comments like ‘OMG me too — I lost my favourite shirt yesterday!’. Would I take the leap and say that I was actually clinically depressed, and that I felt like driving off a cliff? hmmmm.
Phobic is the same. If I tell someone I’m emetophobic (throwing up), I usually get something like, ‘oh, I have a phobia, too — I’m claustophobic! I HATE being in small spaces’. I’ve yet to really erupt and tell soemone that unless they start having a panic attack when faced with their supposed ‘fear’, it’s not a phobia. Dislikes are dislikes, not serious irrational fears.

But on a light note, great post! I’ve been enjoying the British word emails for some time now and just bothered to come over here to check out the blog. Really nice.

By: Midwest Mom

Midwest Mom — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:35:10 +0000

What an awesome argument! Superbly well-written!

By: Michael Harling

Michael Harling — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:14:31 +0000

We are an enthusiatic bunch, are we not? But, yeah, it gets a bit much at times and, as Noble Savage points out, we have really cheapened the word, “Hero.” However, I enthusiatically support applauding pilots after a safe landing. My wife (the Brit) says no one applauds her for doing her job, but if she could guide a floating metal tube filled with people (me, being one of them) out of the stratoshpere and onto terra firma without causing a huge fireball, I would.

By: Noble Savage

Noble Savage — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:35:39 +0000

I find this incredibly annoying too. The first time I heard people applaud the pilot for landing safely I was astounded. Since when did we start applauding people for doing their JOBS?! This is why the word ‘hero’ has absolutely no meaning in American culture anymore — it can include someone who had their finger chopped off in a bandsaw accident and still managed to write a letter to his wife on her birthday, right up to someone who rescued five children from certain death in a flame-engulfed building, at great personal peril.

I can’t wait to be back in my homeland in a few weeks. I’m preparing myself to be simultaneously enthralled and annoyed.