Daily writing prompt
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
My first thought was a swear word. Then I decided I like my swear words. Swear words should be included with our food groups, they are essential. What would I do when a bad driver crossed my path? (and eight in ten are horrible drivers here.) I need my swear words, so that’s a no go.
Well now what?
Maybe something profound, like profound? Nah.
Something deep? Like quantum? Well no, I need to be able to use that word when I make fun of Deepak Chopra. So that’s out.
How about a word I never use? Like “fahrvergnuegen?” Well now I’ve used it, and if anyone posts about it, I may have to use it again dammit!
You know what? I’ve decided to keep my words. 😉
Y’all decide what word you can give up!
Evidence Based Reality 
Not giving up any words. I’d rather acquire a few new ones.
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Exactly!
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I chose “iconic”, and this more because I’m now middle aged and find the youngsters like to reflexively over-use it.
Like chewing gum and walking at the same time, though, we should be able to preen and keep out word-garden well by both adding to and cycling our the particular terms we choose to use.
‘Tis the MEANING, after all, unto which we are striving to better grasp, handle, and convey.
Thank you for the narrative tour-de-force RIFF which you just NOODLED and SHARED.
Have a good one (whichever “one” you should choose).
Thank you.
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Excuse me: “our”, not “out”, in connection with the preening and keeping of the word-garden.
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I have this handy dandy editor, so all better. No one needs to know 😉
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I would be satisfied if people could stop using the word like to pressed their metaphors. Why does everything have to be “like” something else?
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Like, I don’t know man 😉
In that ^^^^^ context, I do without the word “like.”
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I’m not sure which ones I would like to remove from the language but apparently I can no longer use any word that begins with “nig” or “neg” any longer. I asked the clerk in the grocery store the other day if they had Modelo Negra (a beer) and got yelled at for being a racist for using the “n” word. Same with “niggardly”. Got yelled at for using that one too a while back. Speaking spanish in front of none hispanics and using the word black in spanish, “negro”, is apparently forbidden as well. I was having lunch with a friend from Mexico one day and when he asked me what color my new buick was I said mi auto es negro and someone at the table behind me went off on me for being an old white racist.
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Yeah, that one is a definite no-no.
Your experience shows me that the easily offended offendites are pretty frequent in your area. I mean, “negro” in Spanish, is simply the color black. No offense real or imagined intended whatsoever.
As you all surely know by now, I’m an old shelldigger. When I first started diving for shell, there is a species that at the time was known as, and please forgive me internet, “niggerheads.” How that term came to be I’ll probably never know. But that term was replaced with the name “ebony,” back in the early 90’s I believe. I still cringe when I hear the former, from my diving associates.
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Oh! This is EASY for me! 😁
The one word I despise here in my native state of Texas and with SO many family members in small rural (redneck) towns around Austin is “fixin’.” I have spent most of my teen, adult, and now elderly years fighting to remove it, even blast it out of my vocabulary! 🤨 I succeeded when playing soccer around the world, which ended, unfortunately, in 1996 when I moved back to Texas. 😒
And Shell, guess what has returned to my vocabulary like hemorrhoids, especially since moving back to Kerrville? 🤦🏻♂️😑 I am now drowning in redneck vernaculars. 🤮 I think Mayberry, NC has uprooted and moved here inventing all kinds of ‘out-in-the-sticks’ language. 🙄
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You are not alone Prof!
I have seen people here who purposely sound as backwoods, hick, redneck, idjit, as you can possibly imagine.
I grew up in Ill. No accent. Lived in Tn. for 40 years, I can detect a bit of a southern accent in myself now. I ain’t sure how to fix it lol.
Fixin, if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Even use it myself from time to time. The lingo, the accent, it varies. I’ve been all over this country and encountered many oddities in language and enunciation. It’s a regional thing.
But damn, if you live there long enough it grows on you!
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😄 All very true. Grows on us down here and Tennessee, in the still-not-dead former Confederacy, like ticks on a hound, or elephant seal skin-tags on steroids!
See. ^ ^ ^ ^ I can’t stop talking likes a Texan whens I gets goin’… especially whens I’ms around Bubba and Jethro! 😉
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Wait, you know Bubba and Jethro too? 😉
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🤣 BWAAAA!!! Hey, you and I might be Kin-folk!!! 🤭
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I suppose, we are all cousins to some extent. Just depends on how far removed.
On a similar, yet different note: I know a guy, a local artist, I have an original oil of his and several prints. We were talking the other day and he told me about some woman who had him come to Nashville to tutor her daughter for a painting. He showed me a pic on his phone of the daughter holding the painting, I had a vague sense I should know, but couldn’t pin down who she was, then he told me, Reese Witherspoon.
So you never know how far away you are from knowing someone who knows someone famous. And there’s no telling where in our family trees that hereditary paths might cross…
Howdy cuz! 😉
Interesting oddities of life I suppose…
So… I have to know. Do your Bubba and Jethro both have lifted pickup trucks that never haul or tow anything, with 8″ wheel spacers, and nasty ass diesel engines programmed for rolling coal, too?
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OMeffinGEEE shell, yes! 😠 Everywhere you look, drive, or park these leviathan monstrosities are an epidemic annoyance! These types here are a penny-a-dozen with their redneck drivers in John Deer baseball caps with a can of Copenhagen or Skoal dip-cans in their jean’s rear pocket! Care to guess what’s in all their cup-holders? 🤢🤮
What’s worse is that NONE of this gargantuan diesel trucks, with or without dually-wheels, DO NOT FIT in any parking spaces anywhere!!! 🤬 Care to know how many “fender-bender” knocks, dinks, or removals of our side-mirrors have occurred to our two Toyota cars thru the last 5-7 years here? Five to ten times on our front or rear bumpers from massive testicular trailer-hitches. And twice our side-mirrors have been ripped off. In normal or crowded parking lots, you can literally wait for about 4-6 mins WAITING on a dumbass redneck (try to) park these trucks in a parking space BEFORE you can even slip by them! 😡 Yeah, so imagine this cluster-fuckery going on in packed grocery store parking lots, like Walmart’s or H-E-B’s.
That said, do everything within your human powers to AVOID like the plague… Home Depot or Lowe’s parking lots!!!! 🤕
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I’ll take “dip spit” for $1000 Prof. 😉
Yep, that’s the trucks I’m talking about.
Lifted ridiculously, wheels hanging out well past the wheelwell (wheel spacers achieve this for those who don’t know,) and no doubt will fog for skeeters with diesel smoke thick enough to choke the birds flying overhead.
You just can’t “BE” a good redneck without one apparently.
Every time I see one of these trucks I ask out loud, “how much money does it cost to be that stoopid?”
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From this female’s POV, it’s nothing but the male ego at work. Oh, and often a “compensation,” if you get my drift.
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Undoubtedly.
Many years back, I was with my first wife, I parked at the local Wal Mart, next to a small, lifted truck, with big ass wheels on it, and a large flag flying from the truck bed. I winked at the wife, and wiggled my pinky at her. She cackled, and told me that’s exactly what she was thinking 😉
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Yep. As we witnessed during the worst of COVID-19, and still suffer from its descendant variants, STOOPID is also an epidemic round these parts and in your wonderful Tennessee. 🙂
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Probably a word I use more than any other (when the circumstances call for it) is SHIT! And I ain’t giving it up! I know many others prefer the one that begins with “F”, but I’m a proper lady, doncha’ know?
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I understand, completely.
They are all in regular rotation with me though. Sometimes several all at the same time 😉
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I don’t have a word that I wouldn’t find an appropriate use for at the right moment
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