Alex Lella's Blog

Get Rid of Words. . .

First, an announcement. I have just won a contest here at WDC. The contest was to see who could write the best story about elves. The story I came up with was rather long, but it won!

Winger and the Elves  (13+) Winger gets a story this time, but Dafyd and Brendora are still in it.A contest winner! #1940575 by Weirdone-Back in the games

Okay, now to the prompt. They are asking what one word I would like to strike from the language. Honestly, I can't think of one word in particular, although I can think of some phrases that I would like to get rid of.

The big one that makes me laugh is "not unlike". It's redundant. In fact, all "not un-" anything is redundant. "Not unkind" means kind. "Not unfamiliar" means familiar, but "not unlike" seems to be particularly pernicious. Perhaps, it's because people feel the need to avoid the word, "like". Like is kind of a tricky word, because it means identical. Since very few things in this universe are identical using "like" too often can mark you as the sort of shallow person who doesn't notice subtle differences. Somehow people feel that by adding two syllables to the expression they are leaving the door open for there to be some differences between the things compared. They aren't. The definition of "not unlike" is actually exactly like the definition of "like". Maybe these people should consider saying "similar to". The definition of "similar to" is similar to the definition of "like", but the latter means identical while the former implies that the things compared are different in some way.

Oh well. End of rant.

Don't forget to check out the story.