A famous vegetarian once said that murder is as easy to learn as your ABCs. Of course, this vegetarian also said “de do do do, de da da da.” But I think he had a point. Sometimes, de do do do, de da da da is all I have to say to you. But as far as the murder thing goes, I think Sting has never tried murdering a word. Here is the thing about words, they–like Steven Seagall (or was it Jean Claude Van Damme?)–are hard to kill. I have been trying to murder “blog” for all of three days now and there are still 1,570,000,000 entries on Google with that word in them.
Some words are wusses. For example, brephophagist (n. one who eats babies) thankfully disappeared from common usage in the late nineteenth century and despite the popularity of Fat Bastard and Ann Coulter has not made a resurgence. Even extraordinarily useful words like “scaevity” (n. unluckiness/left-handedness) and “krioboly” (n. a bath in the blood of rams) have met their ends. “Scaevity,” I believe, went out of fashion when people finally realized left-handed people weren’t unlucky, just evil. “Krioboly,” on the other hand, maintained some currency until a law was passed prohibiting left-handed people from taking their kriobolies in public. As any southpaw will tell you, if people don’t see you bathing in ram’s blood, it’s just not worth it.
But “blog” is proving harder to kill. So, we must redouble our efforts. Thanks to R. Michael Burns for “cybertribes” and Ron Chalice for “thoughtpuke,” but surely there are more than 2 better words for that word out there. If we are to defeat that word, we must launch an entire army of better options. So get noodling, dear readers. As for me, my krioboly is getting cold, but I shall be back with more tomorrow.
In the meantime, if you want to check out more fun dead words, visit: http://phrontistery.info/clw.html.