Grammar: Neologisms 25

Pastel-hued

New expressions, or good takes on old ones: "Oft observed, but ne'er so well expressed." Clichés are not "colour", they are as exciting as an old sofa that's losing its stuffing. Use your imagination.

The recommendations of the report into Rotherham have been described as "paper shuffling".

classic deconstructionist stylistic filler text (on Judith Butler)

progressive pieties, dulcet psychobabble (atlantic.com in a piece on polyamory)


New to me: obnubilate (cover with clouds); assibilation (T becomes S)

Pastel-hued euphemisms, genteelisms: Like “passed away” or “gender-affirming healthcare”.

Monday-morning quarterback: wise after the event

completely asinine on many levels

with the detached air of a scientist viewing guineapigs

bien-pensantery

I’m not bitter, don’t put it in the paper that I’m bitter! (Says something bitter.)

Of any attempt to slow climate change: The WEF wants to use it to steal our platelets.

sludge trudge: mudlarking

bringing a spoon to a knife fight

Talk left but walk right.

hair-on-fire panic (Simon Schama, 2024)

social justice worrier

Fox News haircut

This is the lean forward moment. (Says a man trying to sell a diamond necklace.)


I wasn’t telling what they were selling: We weren’t on the same page or singing from the same hymn sheet.

Deinococcus radiodurans is a type of bacteria that is resistant to radiation doses that could kill a human being, can withstand acid, dehydration and cold, and is able to survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. Scientists call it Conan the Bacterium. (@qikipedia)

Preaching on Sunday, so have been carefully grinding the serial numbers off a P.G. Wodehouse joke and swapping in a couple of moving parts from Ælfric of Eynsham. (@jembloomfield)

This morning’s Today prog interview with Kim Leadbeater is depressing. She brushes away carefully expressed concerns and offers only peppy enthusiasm and emotional mood music. (@JonnyWorst. Leadbetter is the proponent of the assisted dying bill.)

Weird, dehumanised management speak. (Fergus Butler-Gallie on Paula Vennells)

The @DWPgovuk computers are so ancient they have to be wound up every Monday. (Paul Lewis)

curated peppy homilies (Audrey Luwig re LinkedIn)

To quote the beloved Molly Ivins, if her IQ drops any lower, we'll have to water her twice a day. (@AlessandraAster)

These people are one chromosome short of being a potato. (@AlexTaylorNews)

Wow, if the average IQ of these people were a speed limit we'd be passing them on foot. (@sourpatchlyds)

If you believe that, your brain may be stuck in the “off” position. (@WildfireWhisper)

He had the IQ of a house plant. (Bill Pronzini)

vice-signalling (Pedr Ap Robat. Example: Defund the RNLI – they’re just a taxi service for illegal immigrants! You need to let your cohort know that you have all the right [wrong] opinions. Move on to cruelty to children and make it clear you're in favour.)

On sex and gender Kemi Badenoch’s position is not out of step with the public and she may be able to embarrass Starmer, who has shown bewildering levels of prevarication on whether biological sex matters when it comes to single-sex services, sports and spaces. (Sonia Sodha)

We’re Icarus and our wings are beginning to melt. (@rustbeltenjoyer on American “planning”)

Adapted, seemingly in the dark with a shovel, from Amy Liptrot’s prizewinning memoir. (Kevin Maher, Times on The Outrun)

Budget Day coverage is so over the top. Jeremy Hunt is going to make a speech, not emerge from a chrysalis. (@JoanneLimburg)

I realise now that medical transition was sold to me as a hardware fix for software issues. (@HazelAppleyard_)

The guff about “a consent-based process” is eyewash of course. (Brynley Heaven on a proposed nuclear waste dump site)

Please remember that there is no morally coherent difference between the animals you love and the animals into whom you stick a fork. (@garylfrancione)

"Poshlost" – an untranslatable Russian word that means: "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity". Vladimir Nabakov described it as "Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic". It is a desire to drag all things down. (@MrEwanMorrison)

The lenses in your retrospectoscope need to go back to specsavers; they have acquired a strange rose-coloured hue. (Rowley Cottingham)

Firms owe the council millions in unpaid business rates, but as we have tried to pursue them we have come up against patsy directors registered on Companies House, and phoenixing, where firms have shut to re-open under a new name in the same property but are able to avoid their business rates liability. (Report on Oxford Street and American Candy stores).

Stunning how stupid this Tory governmentt is. Unprecedented, historic. Labour at their silliest were never this regularly, rake-steppingly ridiculous. (@stephen_collins)

Lightgassing: When one person agrees with another person's false beliefs in order to be supportive. (@omni_american)

Old people are not listening to Bing Crosby while being amazed email exists. (Via FB. And an old person is typing this.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Clichés in Quotes 12

I'm launching a new journal: The Journal of Academic Clichés We will only accept papers which claim to be game changers and/or paradigm shifters. All articles must have "of critical importance" in the introduction and end with "more research is needed" even when it isn't. (@DrNeilStone)

Police had the place incompletely surrounded, and when the unhardened criminal ran into the non-assembled crowd, the police fired discriminately into it, an unnecessary evil, and a guilty bystander was non-fatally slain. Since his timely death, the tributes have been trickling in. (@AdamCSharp)

Semenya tends to slip into motivational-Instagram-graphic speak, which also abounds in her new memoir, The Race to Be Myself. She will answer a brief question with a broad, sermon-like delivery, invoking a royal “we” or “you”. (Guardian 2023)

People use such lazy language to describe certain places. I grow weary of hearing 'cosy pub', 'windswept ruin'. I have never come across the tepid fiction of a 'quiet graveyard'. To me, they are a choir of whispers, sites crowded with chatter. (C.L. Nolan)

It was there in all its glory... it has been cut down in its prime. (BBC Breakfast on Sycamore Gap. And can we call breakfast shows "breakfast shows", rather than just "breakfast"?)

“Pop” is so versatile. - pop in/ pop it in/pop out/ pop it out/ pop up/pop it up/pop it on/are you having a pop at me? A pop of colour/popped/popping - not readily used by non native speakers but ubiquitous across dialects in the UK I think. (@Resjudicatamyft. Pop up, pop it on the bed, pop through, pop under.)

 Just going to pop my Walkman on so I can listen to pop while I pop to the pop-up pop stall. (@pjm56tw.  Also “take a pop at someone” and “fireworks were popping off all round”.)


Remember how it works, folks:
For politics, use sports metaphors
For sports, use war metaphors
For actual war, use incomprehensible gibberish
(@dave_brown24)

Cancel culture has eroded free speech. (Tom Stoppard. You’d think a playwright would notice he’s speaking in clichés.)

I noticed as the years went by that fewer and eventually no job applicants listed "current affairs" as one of their hobbies or interests. The lie about enjoying hill-walking was a hardy perennial, though. (@AodhBC)

Nothing irritates me more than people who characterize a Black history fact as “overlooked”, “unknown”, “recently discovered.” Just because you didn’t know doesn’t make it new. (@profblmkelley. See “remote Hebridean islands”. Inhabitants are inclined to say: “To us, London is remote.”)

@theguyliner asks: What common phrase do you loathe for absolutely no reason? Mine is when someone refers to a place they used to live as their ‘old stomping ground’ – makes my teeth itch. (In the UK, it's "stamping ground", but "stomping" is making ground, as is "chomping at the bit" for "champing.)

Twitter denizens came up with:

We're putting the world to rights.
guilty pleasure
sassy
back in the day
Famalam, hollibobs, doggo. (Pupper, kiddo.)
blooms for flowers

“I've got nothing against gay people as long as they don't flaunt their sexuality."

It just happens to be...
dark arts
curating

"Food" washed down with "beverage".
on a bed of...
veggies
eatery
portion
prep in advance

My music, my Victoriana, my Christianity
We like to work hard and play hard.

box clever
to the manor born
hun, babe/babes,
smashing it/killing it/hustling
yummy mummy
bedding in (work context)

reach out
in branch
Love you to the moon and back.
jammy
And the rest, as they say, is history.
It’s not that big of a deal.
ramp up
savvy
Ta muchly!

And I can’t stress this enough.
Price point for price. (Or "price tag".)
this one (for a person present)
Me time.
It speaks to...
methinks
'Asking for a friend' - it was mildly amusing the first ten million times I heard it.
all the feels

"Emotional rollercoaster". It always seems like people say it because they think that's what they're supposed to say. See also "It would mean the world to me".

closure
forever home
in my DNA
This too shall pass. (Adds: “It’s got a tinge of ‘and can you stop going on about it?””)
of this parish
artisanal
"the rents" for parents (also spoons for Wetherspoons and shrooms for mushrooms)

"En route", mostly used by people going to the most dull and banal places ever.

People “serve their country in uniform” for many different reasons. From “so that everyone has the same rights” to “so that college students wear conservative clothes”. “I didn’t serve my country for snowflakes to tell me I’m not politically correct.” (Parody on T shirt) I didn't serve my country for 30 years to be disrespected by people here at home. I didn't serve my country for six years to be told what kind of plant I can have in my yard. I didn't serve my country for four years and work hard all my life only for some druggie to come and rob me of my pension. I didn't serve my country for 30 years, have my life threatened, and lose dear friends in Iraq, to come home, to be in prison (lockdown). I didn't serve my country for 3 years, 4 months and 18 days to have a bunch of multi-millionaire so-called athletes disrespect our country (take a knee). I didn't serve my country for 21 years in the Army and have pieces of my body missing in the process to return to civilian life and become a shrinking daisy and I don't expect my son to be one either. (Be a shrinking daisy: stay out of the sun, wear a hat and use sun screen.)

'Doffed' seems like an 1980s motoring hack word. Like interiors being 'swathed' in leather. (Hilton Holloway. I bet they used “livery”, too.)

Press release puffing a big redevelopment. In a few pars it gets in 'cosmopolitan', 'iconic', 'exciting', 'vibrant' (three times), 'breathtaking', 'thriving', 'bustling' and 'desirable'. But no 'vision', so not quite the full set. (HP)

Something something... unelected...blah blah blah... bureaucrats...blah blah unaccountable Europe...blah...take back control... (Mike Bealing)

A friend has just mentioned coming across a man who thinks that giant hornets are a 'false flag.' If you use terms such as 'false flag', 'wake up' (unless you're my husband and it's 5 am and a crisis), or 'sheeple', my Facebook page is not the Facebook page for you. (LW)

Perry Mason: The police want to talk to you.
Suspect: Yes, the newspapers say I’m being “sought”.


LITERATURE

Whip smart, hardworking, empathetic and wickedly funny. (@KMC4wauk on Kamala Harris. “Whip smart” is usually applied to women, because we’d expect them to be dim, wouldn’t we? And “wickedly” funny – woman is critical, shock! Plus I hate the "whip smart" construction.)

The Brontë sisters originally published under male pseudonyms to avoid being called "whip-smart" by reviewers. (@robpalkwriter)

Literally don't want to read another The X of X book. Don't even want to see them in the shops. Not The Violinist of Baden Baden, The Insurance Salesman of Wormwood Scrubs, or The Dog-Walker of Brickhill. None of them. (@Stephen_May1)

I can’t admit to being terribly enthralled by Moehringer’s evocations of Africa (‘The sun beat down from a hot blue sky’) or by his encouragements to emotion (‘Her tears glistened in the spring sunshine’). The reader may be amused by his making the Duke the first person in history to stand in front of Sandringham and say: ‘I was struck again by the beauty of it all.’ But that is part of his chosen genre, and may be forgiven. (Philip Hensher in the Spectator on Spare, allegedly "by" the Duke of Sussex)

Is everybody in publishing really always so "thrilled" so much of the time? Must be exhausting. (@larapawson. See also job applicants being "passionate" about sales, marketing, widgets or whatever. Can we bring back "enthusiastic"?)

@ClareDederer asks what words in blurbs put you off a novel:

We always watch out for (or at least giggle at) the phrase “what it means to be human.”

searing indictment
irreverent, aka not funny

I really, really don't want to read a book titled The Blank's Wife or The Somebody's Daughter. Can she not be a person in her own right?

If it says it’s “astonishing,” I’m all “I doubt it.”

sweeping, multi-generational
tour de force
whimsical
lyrical (also "melodic", "retelling" and "Gaiman")

Pynchonesque – they never are.

I don't want harrowing. I want to be warned, but I don't want to read it, thanks.

gripping, must read, journey

charming, feelgood, heart-warming, picaresque
achingly beautiful
heartbreaking
elegiac
pitch perfect

Unflinching. Makes me want to try and punch the book to see if it flinches.

If I saw any novel described as 'essential' I would turn against it.

In my first publishing job, I had to write blurbs for academic books. The struggle to find adjectives I hadn't already used dozens of times on previous blurbs was real.

I’ve never quite understood what to expect of “luminous”.

life-affirming
cerebral
zany
provocative, thrilling, mesmerizing
romantic
astounding debut
plaintive
virtuosic

Lovecraftian.
mystical
numinous
essential for our times
ambitious
unputdownable
masterly
urban, edgy
cracking

The next...
The phrase “wit and wisdom.”
“Tolkienesque” is a sure sign it will be disappointing.

I love the blurbs composed for the most opaque literary fiction, when the poor editor clearly doesn’t have a clue what the book is meant to be about.

tender, poetic
dazzling
nuanced
a gem
urgent, important – just let me decide that on my own
laugh out loud

empowering
Orwellian
Page-turner. I mean, that’s the process, right?
If the book 'limns' anything. Anything at all
relevant
poetic, epic

amazing, book of the year, blockbuster None of these tell me anything about the prose style, setting, theme, etc. They just make me think the book isn’t expected to sell well.

More here, and links to the rest.