Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The death of the word "robust"
From "4 Things We Hate About the Obama Oil Spill Review" we get this cranky and yet awesome little rant:
Let's just start with this: it's time to ban the word "robust" from usage as a term of action by both business and government. We can't even read the word "robust" anymore in a corporate press release or government statement without a language lie detector in our brain igniting neuron fireworks -- and we had to read the word many times in the Obama oil spill review document.
Agreed. When I see "robust" in any institutional communication, my inner Pavlov's dog smells bullshit. And that is a tragedy, for "robust" was once a fine and manly word, now ruined for us all by corporate flacks and political hacks.
I wish the professional spinners would stop spoiling good words.
4 Comments:
By 
Unknown, at
Tue Aug 17, 12:25:00 PM:
Nefarious people will always use trusted words to promote their dark message. Face it, how far would they get if they used words with questionable connotations? It's a constant grind of good words going bad. I remember when gay meant light and lively and journalism had some respect to it.
By Bomber Girl, at
Tue Aug 17, 03:38:00 PM:
By JPMcT, at
Wed Aug 18, 03:37:00 PM:
Agreed. Let's also ban:
- Let me be perfectly clear
- At the End of the Day
- Clean energy
- Green jobs
...the list is endless.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Fri Aug 20, 11:35:00 PM:
It still has meaning in medicine. For now.
