What makes a word repellant? Novelty, sound quality, redundancy, or some other factor?
While grading midterm essays over the weekend, I saw some really good papers but also the usual pile of mediocre writing demonstrating the usual problems: comma splices, spelling errors, difficulty in forming possessives. One of the essays my first-year students analyzed was written by a fellow named Kohls, and when it came to making the name possessive, I saw every possible variation: Kohl's, Kohls', Kohls's, Kohlses', and just plain Kohls. None of this provoked any response other than the usual bland marginal comments.
Only one word in the whole pile of papers made me feel as if I'd been kicked in the gut. I've seen my share of awkward constructions over the years, but few cause the kind of visceral response I felt when I encountered Nextly.
What an ugly word! Next is such a neat little bundle of meaning, entirely inoffensive and useful in indicating progression, but add that little -ly and suddenly it grates on the ear. Was my reaction to the word based on its redundancy, its novelty, or something else?
I recall when I first started seeing relatable oh so many years ago and found it vague, unnecessary, and lazy. I fought it at first, but it was a lost cause: relatable filled a need so neatly that its general adoption became irresistible. I still bristle when students use it to say something about themselves when they ought to be saying something about the text they're analyzing, but no amount of bristling is going to send relatable back where it came from.
But I can't help bristling at nextly. Is this one instance just a harbinger of change to come? Will nextly be the next relatable? What niche does nextly fill that can't be filled by next? And why does the simply addition of -ly make the word so stinking ugly?
I hope this was just an isolated error and not the lone cockroach you see in the night kitchen--a visual manifestation of a much larger infestation. Stomping on the cockroach may solve the immediate problem, but it has no effect on the vermin still hiding under the cabinets.
3 comments:
For me, that word is "impactful". It's like relatable, in that (in addition to sounding like a word a toddler made up) it implies an objectivity that doesn't exist. When I hear "That movie was really impactful," I'm usually tempted to say, "No it wasn't, and you're an idiot." If you say "That film really had an impact on me," you're owning its effect on you, which is legitimate (even if I disagree), and I'm more tempted to ask you why/how it affected you.
-Sarah
In Susan Orlean’s new book “On Animals” she writes about her love of animals, saying she was always animalish. While she is one of my favorite feature writers, the word animalish kinda grates on me.
I hear that. "Impactful" and "animalish" sound clunky to me, but who am I to tell Susan Orlean how to write? Well, I'm the same person who cringed when I read a sentence in Karen Russell's story "Ghost Birds" in the New Yorker, referring to the quetzal as "a bird that’s lineage dates back forty-nine million years." Didn't any of those exalted copyeditors at the New Yorker point out how awkward "bird that's lineage" sounds? My best guess is that Russell was trying to capture the narrator's unique voice, but "bird that's lineage" doesn't sound like anything else the narrator says. If only they'd run that sentence past me first....
Post a Comment