Macmillan, the media group in charge of such excellent publishing houses as Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Picador, St. Martin’s Press, and Tor, locates much of its publishing staff in New York City’s iconic Flatiron building. The Flatiron, one of the most recognizable buildings in the city, is also influential in an etymological sense, as its location provided the origin for the phrase, “23 skidoo.”
Note: start watching the video at the 1:00 mark.
It’s not slang that bothers me, as it does so many oldsters, nor is it even all the LOLzy net-speak that threatens to make spelling the new cursive writing. It’s the inflation of language and devaluing of expression, and the considerable role of fashion in that. It’s the dread ubiquity, the absurd-making via thoughtless repetition, of truly essential irreplaceable words like “beautiful” and “glamour” and “perfect” and “love” and “need” and “hate” and “want.” Invented words, neologisms, portmanteaus: those aren’t the threat to language. Rather, they can protect language by giving new words to new ideas or whims, thus saving from bastardization and overuse the old and endangered and best (here I swear I do mean best) words. Some words cannot be permitted to become cliches of style, void of truth.
Sarah Nicole Prickett, on language, style, and the fashionification of expression.
Source: torontostandard.com
