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Awesome! A while back, I mentioned that I'm not exactly enamored with the overuse of the word "awesome" and more to the point, the misuse of the word. I'll refresh your memory.
Awesome is a term that once meant and should be only reserved for those things in life which are...well...awesome. Mountain ranges, extraordinary beauty, epic moments in history. Come to think of it, epic is getting a slam dunk into the incorrectness hamper too.
But we're here to discuss awesome. The fact that the word peppers sentences from here to Timbuktu, is soooo not awesome. To add insult to injury, it's all but replaced "cool". That's not cool with me, because I love cool. Is cool going the way of the dinosaur to sit alongside groovy (another of my favorite words) and balderdash?
Today was a case in point. I'm at Starbucks and smiling pleasantly at the amiable twentysomething male at the register sporting a sideways black baseball cap covered in "bling" that was once known as "pieces of flair" and place my order, which surprisingly, I didn't fuck up. What do you think he said? Exactamundo!
"Awesome!"
Is it?
Waiting for my coffee, I witness Barista Dude chatting up his coworkers. First, he repeats my order, which, as Starbucks policy dictates, is repeated back to him. His response?
"Awesome!" That's it. One word. One, glorious, unencumbered exclamation of joy and exuberance. Or just sleepwalking through a life filled with meaningless sound bites. Take your pick.
His co-worker: "I get off in two hours and I'm going to pick up my girlfriend."
"Awesome!"
Co-worker: "We need a bag of decaf beans for this customer."
"Awesome!" All with a shit eating grin slapped across his face.
Oh, and because this next exchange so beautifully illustrated the meaning of the terms "douche canoe" and "twat waffle", a term which I was explaining to Kevin just moments earlier, I have to share it here.
Man dressed in what look like ordinary guy duds, not in any way a hipster or over intellectualized individual, orders - no kidding - a soy, no foam, 110 degree vanilla latte. Really? Really? You pretentious fuck. You want it at 110 degrees? You gonna be that specific?
Oh, but there's more. Barista gets the order wrong. Butt Brittle tells her "It doesn't say 'vanilla' on it." Barista self deprecates to make amends and squirts a splash of vanilla into the cup. Butt Brittle shoots her a look that says she has wronged him. "This isn't 110 degrees."
Are you serious? You can feel the temperature, Mr. Asbestos Digits? What, is it one degree off? Barista tells him she's "a jerk" and tosses the beautiful latte straight into the trash and feverishly prepares him another as he condescendingly offers "that's okay."
Oh...is it? Is it really? And by the way, you're holding up my order, you Starfuck. So I stare at him. I stare a hole into his 110 degree heart. Because when people piss me off and astound me with their displays of brilliance in the category of assholery, I stare at 'em. Just to unnerve 'em. It's fun.
Then my name is called "Lindsay", because Sir Awesome Sauce was riding so high on cloud caffeinated that he didn't hear me exactly...and I look at Ms. Barista and say...
"Awesome."
I hate the word Awesome. I had a co-worker who thought especially was pronounced exspecially who would use the word Awesome as an answer to every statement. We would literally hunker our heads down into our shoulders when she was conversing with anyone because we knew it was coming. Awesome.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Solidarity. I'm with you on the "especially/expescially" thing too. There are so many. I feel a post coming on... ;) Man, sometimes you just have to hunker down and wait it out.
DeleteA few years ago, teens started throwing around the word 'random.'
ReplyDeleteA random dog ran across the road in front of me.
This random ball came out of nowhere.
It drove me nuts. I was constantly trying to get them to understand what the word random means. Random does not mean something unexpected.
I teach english to non-native speakers and get hung up on this stuff.
Totally agree with you about “awesome.” I loved “cool” so much better too! And “groovy” was one of my all-time favorite words!! I hated when that one went out of style. Balderdash is a great word too. OMG, the good old days! About the Barista Dude at Starbucks...awesome Lindsay! LOL! And that pretentious guy, 110 degrees WTF?! Would have been fun to accidently bump into him after his got his perfect drink...oops, sorry I spilled your drink but have an awesome day LOL!
ReplyDeleteF*CKIN" funny, cool! "AWESOME"...can't stand to hear it anymore! i truly know what you mean and how you feel. you nailed it: this NEW generation is going through their lives "filled with meaningless sound bites"! i just don't get it...nor do i want to.
ReplyDeletebelieve in reviving words. My vocabulary is peppered with things like 'Spiffy' and 'rad' - and I use awesome but I use it in context. As in - the sun rise this morning was so awesome.
ReplyDeleteI have to confess it is my go to word of choice for something which is really cool, although I wouldn't pepper my sentences with it in quite the way described above, honest!
ReplyDelete(I also have an affinity for the exclamation mark, which definitely gets overused in my writings. Sometimes I go back and delete them all because the grammar bandit in me tells me off.)
I am also overusing the word 'marvellous' too much at the moment, so I guess I can't decide which generation I want to be in, linguistically.
I don't go in Starbucks, simply because there's TOO MANY pretentious guys. Also (as a Brit) I don't /want/ to give you my name when I order my coffee (which would actually be a tea or a hot chocolate), and I want a large, not a vente. The whole thing makes me very cross, so I just avoid them completely.
Have you seen the LSS list of words that should be banned? You may want to add it.
ReplyDelete