Writer's Block: Are you incentivized?

[seawasp]

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"Organic". With the exception of salt and water, pretty much everything you can eat is, and has to be, organic.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

The word "organic" has clearly defined well-documented usage in medicine, agriculture, economics, and military science. In food labeling, the meaning is even defined by Federal law. I can't think of a good reason to dump all that nuance and utility in favor of privileging the definition used by chemists, especially when it is usually quite clear from context which (specific, defined) usage is intended.

[seawasp]

I don't expect anyone to change it; the question was whether there was a buzzword that made you cringe, and "organic" makes me twitch. I haven't been incentivized to acclimate my sensitivities and leverage my vocabulary to accept it without a twitch.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Seems a silly twitch to have, since 'organic' in chemistry is a misnomer based on a disproven theory about the uniqueness of compounds found in living matter. Whereas the 'organic' in organic farming makes a good deal more sense as coined, referring to farming systems that operate like an organism in a self-sustaining way, rather than requiring constant external support for vital functions.

[seawasp]

Twitches like that aren't rational -- it's an emotional reaction.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Huh. I don't experience them that way at all; generally when I find I object to that sort of usage issue, it's because I regard the usage as in some way incorrect. If I later find that I was mistaken, the twitch goes away.

[seawasp]

If I were to discover that, for instance, "organic chemistry" didn't actually have the definition in question, I'd try to eradicate that from my mind, but it probably wouldn't have any effect on my twitch.

Yes, it comes from the "BUT THAT'S WRONG" reaction, but it's quite commonly not going to be erased by someone saying "well, in THIS usage that's right". It'll still sound wrong because that's not the usage ingrained in my gut.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

YES. Or "natural," and even bigger offender, and not just limited to food. ARSENIC is natural, fer Pete's sake.

[seawasp]

So's cyanide (various fruit seeds). Have a natural salad with some foxglove! (digitalis)

[claidheamhmor]

Oh yeah, "natural" annoys me terribly too.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

"Dialogue" used as a verb. "Let's dialogue about that."

I have no problem with verbing nouns to create new and useful words, e.g. and self-referentially, the verb "to verb." What I do have a problem with is creating neologisms when there is already a perfectly good word that means the same thing.

"Let's dialogue." How about instead, we talk, discuss, debate, converse, or argue? "Will you author the document?" No, but I will write it.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is sensible. Neologisms that duplicate existing words without adding value beyond syllable inflation are ugly. There is no purpose that 'utilize' is used for that 'use' will not serve as well for, and more elegantly.

[seawasp]

Of course, followed to its logical conclusion, we should have only one word for any one concept and allow no others to be created. Part of what makes English fun to write with IS that it has so many words for the same thing, sometimes to ludicrous extremes.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, that doesn't really follow. For one thing, there's nothing to say one can't add ugly words. But more to the point, most of the synonyms of English don't actually mean the exactly the same thing. Exact synonyms are comparatively rare. Scarlet, crimson, incarnadine, and wine are not the same color, though all of them are shades of red. Take away any of them and English is the poorer.

[seawasp]

There's an awful lot of words that are at best different based more on individual impressions than anything else -- even if you could dig up dictionary definitions showing that there's a difference, few would know. To take one of the words from my prior response "ludicrous" and "ridiculous" don't seem to have a very clear difference in meaning to me -- I can't really think of a usage of "ridiculous" where "ludicrous" couldn't reasonably be substituted. (I also don't differentiate between scarlet and crimson. Wine I see as a purply red, but scarlet and crimson I both see as "fire-engine bright red")

Writer's Block: Are you incentivized?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Trur, but my friends tend to get annoyed when I helpfully point that fact out to them.

Justifiably so, given that we're mixing terms.

Writer's Block: Are you incentivized?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I also like to point out that "Star Search" on TV does not involve using telesccopes to find large balls of fusing hydrogen.

Re: Writer's Block: Are you incentivized?

[seawasp]

Yes, but star in that context doesn't make me twitch.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

"impact" used as a verb. Gah. NO. Or worse, "impactful".

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

My hate word is 'deplane'. If I want to get off an aircraft I'd rather disembark or just plain leave. I don't want to 'deplane'. Ugh!