Dystopian & Diaspora & Disingenuous

Oh my.

Sometimes I think words should go on vacation. Get away for a while. Refresh, before they become the verbal equivalent of a stretched out sweater – one that no longer fits as well as it used to or has the impact it once did. And was it even the right sweater to begin with? A sweater isn’t appropriate for every occasion and certain words aren’t either, but if they’re used and overused and worn out with every outfit, they cease to have any impact at all and just become noise in the background...or foreground. Too familiar, too in-your-face and too often incorrectly used.

The world sucks right now. Truth. But is it truly end-of-days DYSTOPIAN? No. Not yet anyway. So, why keep throwing that word into every sentence describing the state of every single thing? And is every new movie or tv show required to take place in a dystopian world or neighborhood or household? Even the comedies? I think not. 

And what about DIASPORA? It’s “the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland.” It is not when four friends move to the same city after graduation. It is not when a few people decide to separately move to a foriegn country because A. they can and B. it might be fun. It is not when the Muse and I moved to Florida with a job situation after having lived our whole lives in the Northeast. No, those three situations are not diasporas. And yet, I’ve seen and read and heard DIASPORA used several times a day, every day for the last year, to describe similar inappropriate circumstances. Why? It loses it’s meaning and impact and relevance, and becomes a fancy sounding word for “something important.”

Which brings me to my last most annoyingly overused word this year and that word is DISINGENUOUS. Sadly, this word which means “insincere, not honest, and hiding the true facts” is used all too correctly and pretty much non-stop, in relation to our political and corporate leaders. So, I guess that won’t be retired and removed from our lexicon until those leaders are retired and removed from our reality. Ah well, we live in hopes.

“Using an inaccurate or almost-right word loses all the power and impact of the true choice.”

– Mark Twain