BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS and OTHER HYPERBOLE
All languages change over time. New words or spellings of words are added. Sometimes words go out of favor and are eventually considered archaic or are never used again. If the word or terminology is used for a while, a few decades, it can be show up in the dictionary, Then there is slang which sticks around for a season or a generation or two, usually a short cut in language.
I had a friend who used the term BOSS. Just about everything she liked was BOSS.
Lately BOSS got turned into THE BOMB...
Technology has introduced new words and definitions for words such as Cookie.
Are you using slang or terminology from another culture or era?
I know I sometimes say something that my mom or dad would have said and I wonder where they got it from. Sayings that, when it comes right down to it, do not seem to relate to our culture or life experience such as. "After a while crocodile." To which one responds. "See you later alligator." (We did not golf, so this cannot have to do with perhaps wearing the right shirts.)
Film informs us of how people talk or talked, such as all those gangster films (1930's-1940's) which brought organized crime slang into our pop culture language. I use the term moola for money, which I think of as funny or dismissive of money. (Mafia and criminal slang of more recent times in films overuse the slang term that originated in Germanic language, f*ck.) I cringe when I hear people calling murder, "Taking Out."
But, re my criticism of a recent Politically Correct film in which historical figures from decades ago were envisioned as heroes of civil rights and used present day slang and terminology such as "Conversation," and "People of Color," maybe we should be skeptical of dialogue in Old Hollywood films as well. Maybe gangsters did not all go around calling money, moola, or maybe they too had regional or cult terms. Maybe they were stereotyped in those films.
Why would anyone who knows criminals do damage to individuals and society as a whole want to honor them by using their slang?
Then there are the words used improperly to exaggerate, words that are histronic.
For instance, the term BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS has been used in recent years every time there is a threat of a natural disaster associated with climate change, such as hurricanes. Well, the storms do seem to be getting more and more destructive, impacting thousands. Still, Biblical Proportions always implies the Great Flood in which the Entire Earth was destroyed, covered in water. There has not been a rain storm on earth that Great since, so I do wish newscasters and the reportage media would quit using it inaccurately, as a means to hype people up with fear and make them evacuate.
Think of how subtle but powerful a simple word such as BAD is instead.
You get a phone call about someone who has just gone to the hospital. The caller simply says, "Christine, it's BAD," and I'm on my way to the hospital to see that person as they die.
Another wrong usage of our language seems to have started with young, hyper-positive teenagers and young people, especially girls and young women. That is the use of SUPER, which is being used as a modifier. SUPERSWEET, SUPERIMPORTANT...
SUPERMODEL is also an exaggeration. SUPERMODEL is applied now to models or actresses and entertainers who said they modeled, which they did a few times perhaps, or did without ever earning a fortune from it. Supermodel has been in our language over 2 decades but should be applied only to those models who appear on numerous magazine covers with the effect of becoming known throughout the world and become rich from modeling. Gigi Hadid for instance is a Supermodel, but what's-her-name Heidi Klum was never and is not. She's pretty, has no embarrassment of showing her breasts, and perhaps has other things that are nice about her personality or talents, but she was never a SUPERMODEL.
SUPER has taken the place of VERY, which is also overused. The words sweet, important, all words, can stand alone in their meaning.
Hyping words up with SUPER actually has a dulling or deadening effect to their meaning. Hyping up attempts to create more importance and drama to the word to the point where we search for or invent a word that implies even more. Overall, we are better off using an exclamation point but, before we do, asking ourselves if really the word or the sentence deserves one.
I know that once one gets the hang of using words like SUPER or f*ck, somehow it's difficult to rid yourself of them. A good reason why one ought to is that the older you are, the more you sound ignorant or stupid, like you actually don't have much of a vocabulary.
Sometimes I think hyperbole has something to do with the whole Positive Thinking movement, for along with SUPER, SO is also used to exaggerate. In a revved-up, sometimes sing-songy way, the young woman thrills, "We had SUCH a good time. She was just sooooooo excited. I am so-ooo going back there!"
If she's talking about Burning Man, I get it, but if she's talking about a birthday gathering at the local pizza parlor, I take it this person doesn't get out much.
Fantabulous, supercalifragilisticexpealadocious, or giamonstrous?
Hell no... these are creative terms but...
Fantastic, fabulous, giant, monster, are all stand alone words.
Even using them, a more accurate description might be good, big, or lizard.
I ask you to think about this and urge you to use accurate words, expand your vocabulary, cut the slang, just as I'm trying to.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
