How often have you heard these twin words in the last week?
“Oh, that’s amazing!” The speaker might be referring to things as discrepant as the ocean, a baby’s first giggle, a chicken quesadilla, or a deep philosophical insight. How trite and tiresome it sounds. It’s like that old brown sweater, thin and worn to transparency, ready for the rag bag. Yet we throw it on out of habit.
“Wow! Awesome!” We should save this word for the transcendent in our lives. We should not waste it on trivialities, like food, cars, bargains. There are better words for these things, important as they are to us. When did our collective linguistic imagination sink into the toilet? The English language has a vocabulary of 1,025,109.8 words. (Don’t ask me what the .8 word is; I have no idea). The average person uses only 20,000 of them. Isn’t that sad? Don’t you feel sorry for those poor unused words, set aside to languish between the dusty pages of Webster’s monumental efforts?
Just think about it. When we want to describe a sunset, which we should do at every opportunity, what words might we choose? Here are some suggestions, from one end of the alphabet to the other. That sunset is astounding, blazing, colossal, dreamy, evocative, flamboyant, grandiose, heavenly, iridescent, jewel-like, keen, luminescent, magnificent, nebulous, overwhelming, pellucid, quiet, resplendent, stunning, tearjerking, unearthly, violet, wondrous, xcellent, yearning, zestful. Well, that last one is a stretch, but you get the idea.
A baby’s laugh is not just awesome; it’s bubbly, joyous, heartlifting. Loaded baked potato soup is not just amazing; it’s golden, savory, nourishing. On it goes. Maybe we should pick a new adjective each week and practice it on our friends. On to semantic adventures!
