Allow me to vent for a moment. Unless we are in England, “wilst” is not a word I ever want to hear. It is similar to “while,” which should always be pronounced more like “wall.”
I will be there in a wall. It rhymes with drawl.
“Wilst” is just ridiculously pretentious and amounts to putting on airs. Worse yet, it is often improperly used, so those of us who really do have airs to put on, feel twice as insulted. Not only are you arrogant and pompous, you think so little of me, you assume I won’t even notice.
If one was wearing a romantic cloak and wanted to say something like, “Wilst thou goest,” one would be completely forgiven. I am talking about injecting “wilst” into conversations about the weather, as if you are a highly intelligent creature with vastly superior communications skills. This fancy word is often followed up by several clear indications that you have just moved here and have absolutely no awareness of local geography.
At all.
It is one thing for someone to ask, “where is that,” when one is speaking of an obscure back road that has been casually named by locals over the years. It is quite another matter to ask “where is that” when “that” is the staggeringly huge mountain range right outside your front window. Try opening your curtains and exercising a smidgen of intellectual curiosity, karen.
“Wilst” is a clear indication that we have been invaded, colonized by a vast number of newly arrived, complete imbeciles.
Just when I thought my last nerve was already in its death throes, it seems to have reared its ugly head once again. I do not ever want to hear, “OMG” when it comes to the weather. This panicked, desperate plea to “Stay Safe!!!!!” over every single raindrop is just flipping annoying.
In fact, if you are some sort of reporter or emergency management volunteer you should never, ever use all caps and the exclamation point of infinity. POSSIBLE ACCUMULATION OF SLUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is exceedingly bad form. Making those letters all red leads me to conclude an insane person is sitting up high in an ivory tower having an anxiety attack because they can’t seem to find their meds. Listening to this sludge is the precise opposite of “being informed.” This is more like, let’s just all indulge in a moment of mass psychosis and prepare to whack zombies in the back of the head with a shovel.
Wilst thou please just shut up?
There now, I feel much better already. Hubby says I am now sitting quietly and violently sipping tea. He would be absolutely correct.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Whilst I love to use pretentious verbiage, I intend it ironically, with sarcasm, so I don’t consider it the same as sincere pretentiousness.
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LOL! Insincere pretentiousness is quite okay, as is being engaged in art or theater. I generally enjoy weighty verbiage of all sorts which is probably why this latest great offense is so blasted annoying.
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Do include the artificial airs of: ‘the genesis of the landscapers work was around 7am….’ says no one……ever.. it’s one of those annoying words meant solely to draw attention to one’s vast intellectual library—
But Genesis as in ‘in the beginning’ is always rational. Words are like jewels- and like you- can be spotted as out of place quicker than you can say ‘the plethora of ants stood stout against the multitude of nefarious construction workers invading their homeland.’
Forced language is outright annoying.
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My late father always told me to eschew obfuscation. He was a wise guy, but he was right.
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Ha! In Star Trek they create this Genesis beam to shoot at planets and create life. Spock says something to the effect of, okay, but they will be destroying whatever life is already down there, because that’s how humans are, they destroy everything and call it “creation.” Landscaping (which I do love myself) is the same sort of thing, we come in and literally dismantle everything that is already there and that becomes the “genesis” of our gardening project.
Nothing wrong with building and innovating, but when it comes to life, other planets, or artificial intelligence, we are way out of our league and have forgotten the first principle, the way humans are so often sitting in a perfect garden and decide one day to just “improve” upon it all, with disastrous results.
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I find you quite loquacious in your vituperation. However, I’m in complete ‘agreeance’. lol (i hate that word) 🙂
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Ahh yes, “agreeance,” yet another very annoying word.
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Pardon me for the use of whilst, as I’m a snollygoster. 😉
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LOL! Good one, Rob. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Citizen Tom and commented:
Want a laugh? Read insanitybytes22’s post. Then my comments below will make more sense.
One of the funny things about people who try to use fancy language is that their efforts usually backfire.
1. The first problem is that fancy language interferes with communication. The more unusual the words we use, the fewer are the people who can understand us.
2. The second problem is that we cannot substitute fancy words for something worth saying. Once people figure out we are just spouting empty words….. If we have nothing to say, we may as well remain silent.
One of the reasons Thomas Paine is famous is because he was one of the first, if not the first, major authors to write in plain language. People back then used pretentious language to demonstrate that they were in the upper crust. Paine just wanted what he wrote to be read.
Unlike Thomas Paine, the Apostle John did not write for a living. So, we don’t think of him as an author of books. Nevertheless, the Apostle John wrote what may the most beloved and marvelous literary accomplishment. His Gospel uses simple and plain language. Yet the ideas the Gospel of John conveys leave us “awed” in the truest sense of that word.
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I once worked for a guy who ended his emails with the salutation: “In the Day of Our Lord”. It was funny, and we all knew that it wasn’t meant as anything other than a simple way to break up the mundane. He sent that salutation for years, but unfortunately, he sent an email to someone who was new and took offense to it because they didn’t believe in God and the “Lord” was considered offensive to them… Nevertheless, my co-worker ended up in HR.
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Oh, dear! HR departments can be a nightmare. The worst part is that someone can just whine about anything they want and HR will often treat it like some serious event.
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Whilst is annoying, but I already wrote my soapbox on Tom’s post about how much I hate the cult of stupid that eschews a decent vocabulary. Those people are even more annoying than the ones who go around saying whilst. To me. Language is a free resource, and I can use whatever big, unusual, intriguing words I darned well please, and the ignoramuses can shove it.
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LOL! Well that, “cult of stupid that eschews a decent vocabulary” was a fun string of words. 🙂
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I lived in a town that was about 50k back in the 60s and 70s, but most of my relatives lived in the middle of no where in Illinois. Farmers and just plain old country folk most of them simple and sweet. I will say right up front I prefer those kind of people and the time I spent on their land and in the homes was some of my best memories. It is not that I never learned what my sweet auntie Lily would call uppity words I just never cared for them. Most of the time when I heard them used it was to try to make simple folk look stupid.
My best friend when I moved to Texas said I was a redneck and I told him yes and I am a proud redneck. Just look at the mess city people have made of this country and y’all would totally starve to death if farmers didn’t supply you with food. You wouldn’t know how to hunt animals, raise animals, butcher animals, or store the meat. Yet you make fun of those that supply all of that for you just because they don’t sound like some scholar.
My uncle Ray got up every morning at 4am to start his day his wife my aunt Virginia got up at 3am to make sure he had a big breakfast and pack him a lunch. When he went out to the barn to start his day she would go back to sleep until 6am and then get up to start her day. They had horses, pigs, Angus cattle, and milk cows. They also raised black and tan coon hounds. During birthing season and growing and harvest season he would not get home most days until well after sunset. Most city people could not do half of what he did in a days time and yet most people only heard the ways he spoke not the deeply tanned skin, the calloused skin of his hands, the strength of his back, and the gentleness in his eyes.
I say again give me country folk and simple language because words will not feed you if all else falls apart.
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That’s a great story about your uncles and your aunts, and well told. I enjoyed reading that. You are right, often big words are used to try to make simple folk look stupid.
HL Mencken once said, “It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.”
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You are welcome and I enjoyed telling it. Stories of people like them have faded into the background and it is so sad. It has always irritated me that people like my grandparents, my uncles, and aunties are made fun of when it was on the backs of those people this country was built.
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