I'm Caryn with a C, and I'm awesome.
A Sunday well spent brings a week of content.
It’s Sunday and it’s a day to finish all the things you didn’t get to this week. I’m sure one of your Sunday activities is to ready my blog posts from this week to see what is going on in Caryn’s world. Now that’s funny.
It’s okay to be glad it’s Friday
On New Year’s Eve, Lake Superior State University released its 43nd annual “List of Words Banished From the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.” The university collects nominations all year on a Facebook page and releases the words to honor the new year. Some of the previously-banned words include as curate, hack, takeaway, skill set, polar vortex, enhanced interrogation, friendraising, foodie and swag.
Here is the 2018 list and the reasons given by the university:
Unpack: Misused word for analyze, consider, assess. Concepts or positions are not packed, so they don’t need to be unpacked.
Tons: Refers to an exaggerated quantity, as in tons of sunshine or tons of work. “Lots” would surely suffice. (Leslie’s favorite phrase is shit-ton and I will continue to use it!)
Dish: As in to dish out the latest rumor on someone. Let’s go back to “talks about” and leave dishes in the cupboard.
Pre-owned: What is so disgraceful about owning a used car now and then?
Onboarding/Offboarding: Creature from the HR Lagoon. We used to have hiring, training and orientation. Now we need to have an onboarding process. Firings, quitting and retirements are streamlined into offboarding.
Nothingburger: Says nothing that “nothing” doesn’t already. I’ll take a quarter pound of something in mine.
Let That Sink In: One could say shocking, profound or important. Let that sink in.
Let Me Ask You This: Wholly unnecessary statement. Just ask the question already.
Impactful: A frivolous word groping for something “effective” or “influential.”
Covfefe: An impulsive typo, born into a 140-character universe, somehow missed by the autocorrect feature.
Drill Down: Instead of expanding on a statement, we “drill down on it.”
Fake News: Once upon a time stories could be empirically disproved. Now “fake news” is any story you disagree with.
Hot Water Heater: Hot water does not need to be heated. “Water heater” or “hot water maker” will keep us out of hot water.
Gig Economy: Gigs are for musicians and stand-up comedians. Now expanded to imply a sense of freedom and a lifestyle that rejects tradition in a changing economic culture. Runs a risk of sharecropping.
Shakespeare was a vocabulary wizard. In addition to single-handedly adding 3,000 words to the English language, his word choice was so precise that, throughout his works, he was able to use 7,000 different words exactly once and never again. That’s more words than in the entire King James Bible.
A recent trend is giving the new year a theme word which will represent your focus in all aspects of your life. The idea of choosing one year to sum up a theme seems both daunting and thrilling at the same time. How can one word encompass all of the things you hope to be, do, and accomplish in a full year? (amotherworld.com) In 2014, my word was flourish – a time to see my business grow and expand. In 2015, I couldn’t choose one word so I opted for three theme words for the year. In 2016, my word was nurture; I felt that I had the foundation for my career, and new relationships formed, that it was time to nurture them. In 2017, my word was manifest; working to make my dreams materialize.
Fox News suggests that your word be COURAGE. “Courage is refined, renewed and revealed in ordinary everyday living. Courage is never the preserve of the heroes or the powerful. The choice to choose courage for daily living is life-altering. Here is what’s fascinating about courage: The root word for courage is cor – it is also the Latin root word for heart. An early meaning of courage was the capacity to speak about everything on your heart by speaking your mind. In other words, courageous people speak their minds in a heartfelt way; to be heartfelt about life is to be courageous enough to speak your mind. There is a ying and yang to choosing courage.”
Real Clear Politics suggests ENOUGH. Amotherworld.com suggests CLARITY, COURAGE and CELEBRATION. The Intentional Moms blog suggests GENTLENESS. Other suggestions: PURPOSE, REST, YES, SLOW.
What’s your word for 2018?
Over the Christmas holiday, Leslie and a friend made up to watch a recorded Hallmark Christmas movie at our house. I’m not a big fan. They’re predictable, they seem to always have a happy ending, and all the people in the movie are gorgeous. However, The Christmas Train was written by David Baldacci, a crime novelist, and I let Beth and Leslie convince me that I should watch the movie. How bad could it be?
Well, right out of the terminal, we could tell what was going to happen. Will she get on the train? Why is he traveling by train and not by plane to get to LA? Who is the old man? Has anyone ever gotten married in a train station before? The movie was indeed predictable, and I managed to stay awake for the entire two hours. I did find myself wondering where Dermot Mulroney has been. He should make a few more Hallmark movies.
I admit it. I was being hypercritical about the scenery and the wardrobe. Until Kimberly Williams-Paisley showed up in a scene wearing an ugly pair of gold earrings. Why should I care, you ask? We paused the movie to talk about how much the earrings looked like Clippy!
Remember Clippit? Better known as Clippy, it was the default animated character in the English Windows version of Microsoft Office Assistant, an interactive user’s guide that came pre-installed with Microsoft Office bundles from 1997-2003. Clippy quickly became a subject of mockery among Office users due to its impractical and intrusive nature images, and its overall incompetence.
Clippy, a paperclip with googly eyes and expressive eyebrows, was designed to serve as a user-friendly troubleshooter for people using Office applications including Word and Excel. For instance, typing an address followed by “Dear” would cause Clippy to pop up with and a variety of pre-determined messages, including “Hey! It looks like you’re writing a letter!” before offering to help walk you through the process.
While Clippy was intended to be helpful, it was widely regarded as a failure by many users, developers and tech reviewers alike. By the following year, Microsoft product managers who knew Office Assistant had failed publicly “executed” Clippy at the Professional Developers Conference held in Denver, demonstrating how to get rid of it using a Visual Basic code. Upon execution, the paper clip said, “I’m melting, I’m melting” and then disappeared.
In 2009, tech blog Technologizer compiled a history of Clippy, including older versions of the office assistant that were patented but never hit the public. Thirteen years after its original release, TIME declared Clippy one of the 50 worst inventions of all time.
Not to worry, Clippy. It seems some jewelry designer copied you into a pair of earrings (without the buggy eyes, of course).