Sunday 16 December 2012

Sunday rest: Word Not To Use Today: wordsmith.

No, don't use wordsmith. Really. It'll make you look such a dork.

It's nonsense, anyway: a smith is someone who makes things out of metal by hammering at them, and a wordsmith, as far as I can tell, doesn't make anything except people want to punch him.

Be a writer, or possibly an author if that title is thrust upon you (although author linked to authority, and really, you'd have to be mad to take any notice of what writers say most of the time).

Be a poet, or a journalist, or a hack. A columnist or a story-teller or a bard.

A historian, or a playwright, or a liar.

A biographer, or a screenwriter, or a comedian.

But please, please. keep away from wordsmith.

Unless you really want people sniggering behind your back.

Word Not To Use Today: wordsmith. This word comes, via the Gothis waurd and the Latin verbum, from the Sanskrit vratá, which means to command. Smith is Old English and is related to the Middle Low German smīde, which means jewellery, and the Greek smilē, which means carving knife.








2 comments:

  1. Agree completely! I hate that word too. And I'm not keen on AUTHOR, I have to say. Always describe myself as a writer. That's it. Not keen to limit myself to Children's Writer, Novelist, or even Poet. Well, don't ever call myself that...

    ReplyDelete
  2. You forgot critic and broadcaster, Adele!

    Polymath? Or does that sound too much like a clever parrot?

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