Express Yourself

Words can reveal a lot about the person who is using them, and whether we realize it or not, vocabulary affects how we view others.  My best friend from high school went off to university in D.C. -- a big deal for a girl from Smalltown, Kentucky -- and stood out, not just because of her accent, but what she said.  She described for me the look she got the first time she told her college roommate that she was "fixing to do" something.  Until then, I had never thought to question such a phrase because it was a part of the everyday language that made up the fabric of my life.  From that day forward, I couldn't hear it in conversation and not think that the person using it was marked for life.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, but I've been watching a lot of television lately while packing up my house, and listening to character dialog (some good, some bad, most mediocre) has reminded me of something that my friends and I figured out during our college years:  some words and phrases make us happy, and others drive us insane.  It's been a while since I contemplated the lyrical qualities of certain letter combinations, but it's a conversation that my roommate and I discussed on more than one occasion.

Something that we both noticed was the clunky, ugly nature of "u" words, with the short pronunciation of the offensive vowel.  To our way of thinking in our infinite twenty-something wisdom, there was a whole list of short u words that the English language would be better off without.  I am deliberately leaving out two that may offend -- one of these is the ugliest of uglies to me, and the other gets its fair amount of usage when I'm driving. After these two, for me, top of the list for removal from Webster's would be stub, stump, lump, culled, lung, gusset, bunt, dung, stunt, stunk, club, grub, grunt, glum, drudge, sludge, crummy, bludgeon, bubba, stuck, suck, bungle, turd, blunder, butch, and so on.

There are probably at least a dozen more that all of you could name without giving it much thought, but I'm sticking to the ones that come immediately to mind.  I also realize there are probably just as many u words that sound poetic and beautiful.  If so, you'll have to mention them to me in the comments because I can't think of a one.

All these auditory offenders have their counterparts, thank goodness.  Some words, when I hear them, make me smile, regardless of what they mean or the context in which they are used.  I just like the way they sound.  Serendipitous, rube, calligraphy, gallant, epiphany, gaff, brogue, pilfer, scintillating, baffle, gesticulate, edification, malleable, oleander, automaton, dalliance, maniacal, cacaphony, pileated, littany, conundrum (see, there's one of those u words sneaking in on me!), enigma, nincompoop, rendition, voracious, nodule, winsome, eulogy, allegorical, copulation (hee hee), diligence.  Not an exhaustive list by any means, but a fair sampling of blissful decadence, in my humble opinion.

Now that you've gotten a tiny peep into how my twisted brain amuses itself, I feel like I can mention one phrase that always sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I've been watching all the episodes of In Plain Sight and I've enjoyed them, mostly.  But the writers, despite all their witty comments spouted by the female protagonist, are lazy.  In three seasons, they have four times used the same crappy phrase with multiple characters.  It's not as though I've never heard "screwed the pooch" before, because my dear sweet husband has used it in conversation with me in the past. ** 

Now, as far as I'm concerned, you can screw up, screw off, get screwed three ways to Sunday, screw it, or go screw yourself.  

BUT PLEASE.  If you mess something up, do not use the phrase "screw the pooch" to describe your mistake.  There are innocent dogs out there, and I see no reason to invoke an epithet analogous to bestiality, especially when it implies a not-so-nice experience for the animal!  

The dogs deserve better.  

And frankly, so do the various characters of In Plain Sight.  Cable doesn't really have much going for it, so this show stands out.  I'd hate to quit watching it because of some lazy, uncreative writing . . . but I'm a little shamed to admit, it wouldn't be the first time.

Do you have a word or phrase list, too?  If so, share some with us.  It's just me, three friends, and my two dogs that can't read (and neither of which have ever played a starring role in "screw the pooch").  Nothing could be more cozy!

**I feel the need to clarify:  my husband used this yucky phrase to describe actions taken by those who share the same employer.  He would NEVER use such a phrase to describe a screw up of mine.  Mostly he pretends not to notice when I make mistakes, which is why he is such a great husband!