A few words about a few words

Here at last, for absolutely no reason, unasked for, unneeded, I bring you some rather basic definitions of a few of my favourite words. I've put them in order of emphasis, with the first being the least emphatic.

Meh: It doesn't matter, I don't care, maybe, sort of.

    Homer: Kids, how would you like to go...to Blockoland!
    Bart & Lisa: Meh.
    Homer: But the TV gave me the impression that—
    Bart: We said "meh".
    Lisa: M-E-H. Meh.




Beh: I dismiss [insert whatever you feel like dismissing here].

    Person 1: Is shaving the cat really a good idea?
    Person 2: Beh.




Feh: [Insert whatever disgusts you here] disgust(s) me.
    Person 1: What do you think of dirty hippies?
    Person 2: Feh.

The Pronoun Problem

The lack of a neutral pronoun in English is one of the biggest problems in our language. Oddly enough, we used to have two of them, ou and a, way back when English was Middle English. If that interests you and you'd like to know more, go search for it yourself.

I've always used the masculine when referring to an entity of unknown gender. A word to the wise: what with all the women's liberation, this practice can get you into hot water in these troubled times. "The male shall be held to embrace the female" sounds cool, but I'm not going to use that as an argument in my writing class, which is attended predominantly by women. So that's out.

Moving on, we arrive at plural pronouns being used to refer to a singular subject:

    Maya Angelou often faces difficulties with their choice of subject matter.


This is wrong. Seeing this error makes me want to put out my eyes with a rusty set of tweezers. If you do this, shame on you. If you know who Maya Angelou is, double shame. If you've read her work and like it, stop reading this, cut away a portion of your skull using whatever dull knife is handy, and spray glass cleaner on your exposed brain.

The one thing more horrible than watching an overweight gentleman do the splits is watching a pronoun perform the same operation. Michael Moore mid-routine is more graceful than these abominations:

    Mr. Moore's routine was poorly received by the Russian judge. He/she had left his or her rotten fruit at home, and thus s/he was unable to discharge his/her ire.


People who use these unholy creations will be hunted down and killed like the sick beasts that they are. I will visit upon them a terrible wrath, extinguishing them and their brood. Slowly.

There are some suggestions for neutral pronouns floating about in linguistic limbo as I write. We've got xe, zie, hir, and some others I'm too lazy to look up. The only one I could see myself using is co, possessive form cos. The rest aren't worth stealing, and you're sure as hell not going to catch me saying zie all the time.