The dreadful thing about some words is that they're too useful. For instance, ubiquitous. It's a horrible, oily, orange-lamp-lights-on-wet-streets word, but it gets everywhere.
I suppose one could use omnipresent, instead, but omnipresent has a great lumbering hump at the beginning and a spit in the middle, and I think might be slightly uglier even then ubiquitous.
Basically, the world would be a better place if we avoided both of them. It's quite possible to do so. After all, I've written rather a lot of novels and I don't think I've used either ubiquitous or omnipresent in any of them.
Actually, I've just checked, and I haven't even used them in Goldkeeper - and that's all about God.
So I'm calling for a unilateral ban.
Okay?
Thank you very much. I appreciate it, I really do.
Word Not To Use Today: ubiquitous. What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, they've given us ubiquitous. It comes from the Latin word ubīque, which means everywhere.
How clever of you to KNOW that you've never used ubiquitous in your work. I couldn't put my hand on my heart and swear to it but it's not a word that I use often. Though I must say I don't dislike it nearly as much as you do! I think it's quite a PERKY sort of word....
ReplyDeletePerky? Oh, but it sounds spiteful to me - that nasty pecking BIQ.
ReplyDeleteStill, some people must love it, or it wouldn't exist, would it?
So I expect I'm wrong. Again. Ah well!