Words and Expressions The Internet Revived, And Shouldn't Have

This was just a passing thought, but it's passed through me before.

The internet has created some new words -- "FAIL" as a noun, for example. ("Win," too, as in "made of win.")

A lot of these are good.

It's also revived a lot of musty, archaic, sort of pretentious words that had entirely died in spoken English, and 95% in written English, too.

I've noticed a few of these "rescued words" before. The only one I can think of now is daresay, but I know there are others -- this occurred to me before thinking about other words.

Ten years ago you wouldn't be caught dead writing, or for God's sake speaking, this dead word.

But the internet has revived it. People are daresaying all the time, way too much for my liking.

In fact: I hate to say this but I daresay if you google you'll find I've used it.

Part of this I guess is cross-pollenization from British writers, where I daresay many archaic/musty/fussy/pretentious/abandoned words are still part of everyday spoken English. And I guess that many Americans' inherent Anglophilism impels them to adopt these foreign words as a sort of affect of sophistication.

Help me out -- I know there are like ten words that show up way too frequently on blogs, which had been all but bannished from everyday American-accented English a while ago.

You know what I mean? Because I don't, but I daresay I'm keen to find out what I mean.

Actually... I daresay the word, maybe, is unobjectionable and useful, and so maybe it's not wrong that it's been revived.

I daresay, however, that if you used this word ten years ago, you would have gotten your ass kicked.

Another one -- Adam Carolla one time said he wanted to beat the hell out of any guy who used the expression "How so?"

That was like ten years ago. But "How so?" is now being used all the time.

If he told that joke today, no one would get it. It would be like him saying he doesn't like guys who use the word "shirt."

posted by Ace at 02:34 PM

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