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Sunday 2 March 2014

Sunday Rest: fabtastic.

Yes, I'm afraid I do mean fabtastic.

Horrid, isn't it.

The horrible thing seems to have been used most often in the 1980s, as in  "Don Lane mania is sweeping the city - people simply can't get enough of this fabtastic talent" which is from a piece by James Wolcott.

I suppose the idea is that something fabtastic is even better and more sparkly than something merely fantastic or fabulous.

And is that impression the word gives us?

Nope. It comes over as a lazy attempt to express enthusiasm for something that's too boring to be worth describing properly.

It's not heard often, now, but it's left a faint trail of saccharine horror over the last part of the twentieth century.

Ah well. It's another reason to be grateful for the new millennium, isn't it.

Word Not To Use Today: fabtastic. The words fantastic and fabulous are both to do with make-believe. Unfortunately fabtastic exists in real life. Boo!











 
  

 


 

2 comments:

  1. I don't like this; it's an ugly melding of discordant syllables.

    However, and rather oddly, I don't mind 'abfab', which I find rather amusing if spoken jocularly in a posh voice.

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    Replies
    1. Abfab is interesting. In England it means 'the sort of thing that would be liked by someone posh, narcissistic, foolish, and drunk enough to be an object of derision', derived from Jennifer Saunders' situation comedy Absolutely Fabulous. It's fine as far as I'm concerned; luckily the stresses are different from fabtastic.

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