And DON'T tell me to chillax! A rant.

Chillax?

Oh good grief...

This word has been around for a few years, but it's been ignorable until the other week, when they had the latest meeting of the G8. (The G8 is a group of the leaders of eight rich countries, though  not necessarily the very richest ones. No, don't ask me why they're not the very richest, I don't know. Nor why in the photos:



 there appears to have been ten of them.)

Personally, I would have thought the G8 would have had plenty of work to do solving the odd problem the world still faces, but apparently photo-opportunities and the football were essential, too.

They needed, apparently, to chillax.

What's so utterly infuriating about this word?

Well, for a start it has an awkward rhythm for an English word: daDAH. In fact it's so unusual that British English speakers, who tend to get bored half way through their words, anyway, have been heard to pronounce the word CHILLuxs.

Secondly, it's a monstrosity, a combination of CHILL and RELAX, half via Latin and half via Old English. This obviously only matters to poor sad people but...

...oh dear...

Whoops.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, thirdly, and this is the worst thing of all, chill means relax, and relax means chill. If you want to do either then the last thing you want is to have to make the effort of saying extra syllables. Chillax adds nothing to the meaning of either.

I know it doesn't matter really. I know it's not worth getting in a state about it.

But if anyone tells me to chillax then I might just have to become a hermit.

Word Not To Use Today: chillax. Half chill, half relax, and wholly unnecessary. Chill is from the Old English ciele, which is related to calan, which means cool; relax is from the Latin laxus, which means loose.