|
2001-07-09-8:30 p.m. Today my friend and I got into a discussion about the words people sometimes use in an effort to make themselves sound more intelligent and how oftentimes they have the opposite effect. This discussion was in part spurred by an ongoing joke of ours about an email I once received from a guy I know. The person in question is inordinately fond of the word hence and he would pepper his emails with it. The email that shall live in infamy, however, included not only hence but also therefore. I�m sure the author never foresaw the hours of fun we would have with this one example of pretentious prose. It went something like this:
The nonsensical first sentence was an extra delight in this bonanza of �listen how smart I are� reading. Extraordinarily proper and arcane words seem to be the words most often chosen in these instances. It�s almost as if they are trying to model their speech after Jeeves the Butler but come off sounding more like Granny Clampett interpreting Shakespeare.
I suppose it is also a testament to our easy entertainability that we unfailingly find this line of discussion hilariously funny. **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
