Choose Carefully

Is it just me, or have we completely abandoned the beauty and complexity of the English language?

Case in point; the word awesome.

Everywhere I go, everyone I meet, everything I hear on the radio or TV, people use the word awesome to describe something positive. No matter what degree of intensity. That was awesome. You were awesome. Your car looks awesome. This job is awesome. Jay Leno is awesome. This mint toothpick is awesome.

But to quote Merriam Webster:

awesome
adjective
1. astounding, overwhelming, breathtaking.
2. inspiring awe or admiration;
3. intense feeling of elation or extreme wonder

Now I really don’t have a problem with the word when used properly. When it’s not, I gnash my teeth and spit nails.

I was in a restaurant and overheard a young woman say to her friends, This chicken sandwich is awesome!

Really? Your Chipotle Chicken on Honey Wheat actually inspired you? Filled you with extreme elation and wonder? You were overwhelmed?

What she could and should have said was; My chicken sandwich is delicious, or my chicken sandwich is tasty, or my chicken sandwich is scrumptious, or my chicken sandwich is luscious, or my chicken sandwich is delectable, or my chicken sandwich is mouth-watering…hell, I’d even take yummy. But awesome? Really?

We’re getting lazy as a culture. It’s too hard to stay on our toes, squeeze the gray matter between our ears end try and take advantage of the complexity of our wonderful language to actually communicate accurate feelings and ideas.

And for some reason, linguistically, we always dip the bar down to the lowest common denominator; the stupidest person in the room. Today it’s the surfer dude who says, Awesome! Radical, dude! In the eighties it was the valley Girl-speak; Oh my God! Totally tubular! In the seventies, the hippie; Right on, man! And in our haste to fit in and sound like the crowd, hundreds of thousands of rich, distinct and unique words of specific meaning roll around the bowl of our society, ready to be flushed out to sea.

Now you’re probably thinking, Tony, relax. It’s just a word, don’t get so bent out of shape.

But wait…

Let’s return to our young, not-so-eloquent gal with the chicken sandwich (which was awesome, by the way). Let’s say she goes to the bathroom in the restaurant. She sits on the toilet and suddenly, through the window, comes the shining face of God in all his wonder and splendor. She rushes from the john, runs up to her friends and says, I just saw the face of God. It was awesome!

And they think, Really? The face of God is like a chicken sandwich?

To quote everyone’s Grandmother; Mean what you say and say what you mean!

I’m Anthony Wood. I’m angry (annoyed, livid, irate, fuming, cross, heated, furious, incensed, enraged and outraged)

And my thing is in my whatchamacallit.