Spring cleaning

As a public service to the Commonwealth, I periodically draw up a list of the English language’s most obnoxious words. Bad words are like bad neighborhoods, you can’t avoid them entirely, but it’s a good habit to steer around them when you can. So it’s time for an updated list of stinkers to avoid:

1. “Literally.”

The way the word is usually used nowadays is exactly opposite to its true meaning. You’ll hear American Valley Girls, and some Commonwealth schoolteachers, say “I was like, you know, literally killed when I heard that George broke up with Sally.”

Uh, no you weren’t. If you were literally killed, you wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.

2. “Diversification.”

This is a perennial stinker in the Commonwealth. Some pol who doesn’t know Pareto from Pastrami becomes a self-appointed expert in macroeconomics, and tells us how “diversification” is a magic economic bullet.

Result: The CNMI lurches from one hilarious, childish scheme to another.

Under misguided theories of “diversification,” a doctor should presumably diversify his earnings by spending a day a week flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Right? And McDonald’s should close down some of its booths and offer haircuts in those spaces…right?

I say: Unless you understand the real meaning and repercussion of diversification, please spare us the lecture.

Furthermore, “diversifying” is not a substitute for being too incompetent to tend your key industries.

3. “Misogynous.”

This word means, basically, “anything that angers a feminist.”

But everything angers feminists. That’s why they’re feminists. Therefore, the word holds no punch.

4. “Almost exactly.”

OK, it’s a phrase, not a word, but what a stinker it is.

If something is exact, it can’t be almost. If it’s almost, then it darn sure isn’t exact. I think this term gained popularity from the same schoolteachers who started salting their speech with the “literally” word.

5. “Progressive.”

Know what this really means? It means socialist. When you hear of a “progressive” political agenda, it’s a code word for “socialist.”

Notice that socialists rarely call socialist ideas “socialist?”

Ever wonder why that is? Maybe they’re…uh…hiding something?

6. “Disorder.”

News flash: Some people are just plain stupid. That doesn’t mean that they have a disorder. Even Forrest Gump knew it: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

7. “Albeit.”

This is in vogue among bad American writers. Like salt, a little is OK, but a lot is obnoxious.

8. “Ironically.”

This is a darling of the “albeit” and “literally” crowd. They typically misuse it when they mean to say “tragically,”” paradoxically,” or “strangely.” Very few things are genuinely ironic enough to merit using the word.

9. “Hegemony.”

The Commonwealth seems to avoid this stink bomb of a word, but it’s a global favorite with the cafe-intellectuals. Enough already!

Well, there you have it. Nine stinkers to weed from your vocabulary. Call it spring cleaning for the mind.

(Ed Stephens Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. E-mail him at Ed@SaipanEconomist.com.)