Aholic-gate!
In today's society of addiction and greed we regularly hear about shopaholics, chocaholics, workaholics, sexaholics and any other type of "-aholic" you care to invent. But this randomly adding "-aholic" onto the end of a word has a tiny little flaw. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!
Okay, this all derives from the term 'alcoholic', as in someone who is addicted to alcohol. So it's alcohol - ic. So why the hell is someone who is addicted to shopping called a shopaholic when the should be called a shoppingic? I mean, an alcoholic isn't someone addicted to alc's, are they? Why create the addiction suffix by culling a large portion of a word that itself has fuck all to do with the addiction? And even if you do, why is it "-aholic" and not "-oholic"? Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol, not alcahol. They're alcoholics, not alcaholics.
I cannot quite explain why, but this blatant disregard for the way in which words are built annoys the living crap out of me. If I was an alcoholic I would turn around to all those other cunts and give them a piece of my drunken mind... "Oi! You there, fatso! Yes, you with the brown sticky stuff oozing down your fingers. You are not a chocoholic. Leave my addiction-title alone and get your own. From now on you are a chocolatic. Don't argue, bollock-face! Just admit it - it makes much more sense. I am reclaiming the 'hol' to reunite it with it's 'alco', and don't you dare try to stop me!"
And while I'm on the subject, why is every political incident now labelled something-gate? All this butchery of words must be part of a conspiracy by fuckwits to overthrow the English language and replace it with gobbledygook! Let's call it "fuck-wit-gate", that'll be nice and snappy...
... hey! Could the people who insist on putting 'gate' at the end of every singly political story be refferred to as "gateaholics"? Or should we keep it snappy and just continue to use "cunts"?
Cheers m'dears!
posted by Binty McShae @ 4:17 pm
11 Comments:
Are you sure you're not an English teacher?
My mother was before I was born, which meant that she was constantly cursing at the TV everytime they failed to use the right word or phrase.
To this day I wince every time I hear someone say "2 choices" when actually there's only one choice, but 2 options.
I foam at the mouth when I hear 'it's a disconnect.' No it bloody well aint! I can disconnect something but it isn't one. And yesterday someone said 'I was stood over there.' and I automatically said 'standing' and everyone gave me funny looks.
Somewhere or other I heard that you can gauge the bullshit-to-truth quotient of any speach or document by the volume of cliches contained within.
That is, cliches seem to have meaning, but really don't. They stand in for speach when the speaker has nothing to say. Remove all the cliches, and if the remainder is incoherant then there was no meaning to begin with. Not sure I agree.
As for '-gate' becoming a suffix meaning 'possibly disastrous political scandal' and 'aholic' meaning 'addicted to', I'm all for it! The English language is an evolving one, and the origins of half the crap we probably think is just peachy (like 'peachy' meaning 'fine and dandy'. And 'dandy'...well, I dunno.) are most likely just as ridiculous.
But just ASK me how I feel about "x-treme" and the word "basically".
Soooo.. basically, a bunch of x-treme ultra language-aholics, bent on creating the next English-gate....
:-D
The new favourite cliche of politicans, taking over from "stepping up to the plate" and "robust response", seems to be "this drives a coach and horses through [insert legislation / judgement etc]". Bollocks. The whole bunch of buggers should be sat down and forced to read Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language', and then sign a legally binding document admitting that they are barren, unimaginative dullards.
So fucking there. And another rubbish thing to come out of Watergate was referring to unknown sources as 'Deep throat', after than Mark whatsisname who got outed recently. Get with the times! Where are the sources identified only by code names like 'Weapon Of Ass Destruction 7' and 'Look Who's Coming On Dinner?'
Rant over. I'll sit down now.
I won't deny that i've used this lazy shorthand myself Binty, but yes, it makes no sense.
Does this mean that someone who describes themselves as an addictive personality could really get up your nose by calling themselves an 'aholicaholic'?
Kim - I am not an English teacher, nor would I claim to be an expert on grammar or punctuation. We all make mistakes, that's fair enough. But it's when these mistakes are constantly repeated and taken as accurate that it gets my goat!
FMC - where I used to live I used to get scroungers asking "Can I lend five pounds?", or something similar. Really ticked me off! It's "borrow", you arse!
SafeT - basically, what you're saying is you're peachy with evolving English as long as it isn't x-treme, am I right? Well, I'm all for evolution as well, but the examples mentioned in my post seem more like genetic engineerg than natural selection to me!
Redhead - mockery will get you nowhere, m'dear!
13th - your reasoning behind the naming of an anonymous source amuses... I think some of the anon commentators that crop up in blogland should be identified similarly!
IM - we all do, I'm as guilty as anyone of saying "a near miss"... well, if it nearly missed it was a fucking hit, wasn't it!
Peter - I suppose they could... but since my alternative would leave them being called an 'icic' I might turn a blind eye!
cool blog!
Why, thank you m'dear!
How amazing. I was thinking this exact thought myself the other day. I quite agree with you. Something needs to be done about it.
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