Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Big Words just for show-offs


There are many things about growing up that I am not looking forward to. Along with taxes, mortgages, root canals and C-sections, adulthood appears to be a pain in the neck. One of the main things that I am a tad bit nervous about also, is the use of big words.

Yes, you read that correctly. Big words, or in adult terms, copious vocabulary, is something that confuses me beyond all belief. Apparently once you cross the border of adolescent juvenility to ripened maturity, that is when you begin to use words that are massively polysyllabic. See, there I go myself, I am turning into the substantial statement spewing monster that I am sarcastically scorning.

Big words are an intimidating terror that baffles people into a colossal state of confusion. Words like troglodyte, fantasmagoric, charlatan, or supercalifragilisticexpialodocious are such vocabulary terminology that perplex people into an annoying migraine. Words that make someone want to play tag with a porcupine, or leap frog with a unicorn.

Now why do people say such things? Such enormous expressions evolving from their mouths. Is there a reason that once you hit adulthood your language transforms into this new-fangled inventory that so confuses the youth? Do you want to know why? It’s the reason that people are trying to look smart I tell you. Saying words that nobody else can understand makes them think that they are on some kind of intelligent plateau that no one else can reach them on.

For example, I was at a recent meeting surrounded by adults who clad themselves with language and terminology that no one else could understand, all while their noses were pointed high in the sky, proud at the fact that they are speech geniuses.

Now I know that I'm not the the wisest guy out there, but I do feel that I have a fairly decent understanding of “big kids” conversations. But hold the phone Dora with this group of prudent pompous people, I was out in left field as they spoke in what sounded like a jibberish articulating extraterrestrial from one of Saturn’s moons’, one that was mumbling in German at that!

I am not the only one who feels like big words are a hairy predicament for students our age preparing to move into the adult way of life. Take for instance freshman Steve Malmberg, who said, “I think it’s so dumb when older guys (and girls) say such big things. What are they trying to do? Make all of us look stupid?”

He does have a point, and he even expresses it with such simplicity from his oral orifice.

All in all, big words are an atrocious alarm that leaves myself and such other students in a load of apprehension. You as a reader may find it somewhat ironic that littered throughout this blog are words that half of the English majors on campus can’t even pronounce let alone understand. However even more ironic is the fact that the word Hippotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is defined as the fear of long words.

Yeah, try saying that five times fast.

3 comments:

  1. I believe you suffer from something called Hippopotomonstrosesquippe-daliophobia. It is the fear of long words (that's ironic. :)

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  2. Dang i commented before i wrote that. I wrote an article about that once. Thats how i look smrt. :)

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  3. I hope you don't worry too much about C-sections I doubt you'll need one

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