It is an amazing thing, the way we can use language to express ourselves and to create great novels, and some poetry can be ok too. It has been observed that the English language is such that we can take two perfectly ordinary words such as cellar and door and when put together they sound beautiful. Interestingly though I think the reason that they work so well together is because they flow more like a French phrase rather than an English one. It is frustrating when some words are frequently misused entailing that their original meaning is lost, or they end up having no meaning at all. Words that are often misused, or I should now say were misused due to revised definitions now in the dictionary which I will explain later, are ‘ironic’ and ‘literally’ . One of the worst cases of ‘ironic’ being misused is in the song ‘Ironic’ by Alanis Morrisette.
To clarify, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (online), the definition of irony is; ‘a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.’ Morrisette’s song about the irony in life includes many examples where one can experience irony. Apparently it is ironic to have rain on your wedding day. If I am to understand irony correctly this is more a case of bad luck. Unless, you are someone who LOVES rain but NEVER on wedding days for that would be terrible. In this case I would allow it to be called ironic but Morrisette really needs to be more specific if this is what she means.
According to the song it is also ironic to be in a traffic jam when you’re already late. Again, rather than this being irony, it is more an example of simple bother. It is probably also even more likely that you’ll be in a traffic jam when you’re already late as your normal time probably beats the rush hour. Furthermore, your being late adds to the traffic jam, meaning that the only irony is in the fact that you hate the traffic jam and yet you make up part of it. No, the only ironic thing about ‘Ironic’ is that there is nothing ironic about it, which as the definition says it should be, it quite amusing.
At this point in the blog, I was going to talk about the misuse of the word ‘literally’ and my anguish when people say things like ‘he was literally the size of the Eiffel Tower’ referring to someone who is a little over 6ft. However, due to the definition being changed, it is now no longer a misuse of the word to use ‘literally’ figuratively. The problem I have is not with the evolution of language but I fear that if we continue to use words in a way where we mean their direct opposite, eventually it will be impossible to understand any sentence. We will live in a world of opposites. So rather than ranting about the misuse of the word ‘literally’ I just want to make a very small but important note on the word ‘expresso’. My note is that the word does not exist! There is no such thing as an expresso coffee; the word is ‘espresso’. I was horrified to find this word at the end of ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder but I have an old edition so I hope by now the editors have realised their mistake. This coffee does not exist, so stop asking for it.
This man is literally taller than the Eiffel Tower, if the tower is really small and not really far away
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