Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for November 14, 2011

I always wonder what inspires obfuscation in upper management!

Hey Rocky … watch me pull a new word out of my hat!

set the random buzzword generator to “stun”.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks […] English […] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”The Six Rules:1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.From Politics and the English Language by George Orwell (1946)

Shouldn’t that be “…creating annoying neologisms.”?

You mean “to strategize methods of anticopacetic neologization.”

What the hell is he saying…

Like physicality & trickeration? Sports broadcasters are the worst on this! Trickeration? Really? Try trickery you ding dongs!

I always wondered where those annoying words came from. Someone’s gotta be making them up somewhere.

Don’t utilize a long word when you can use a better short one.

The current time is propitious to enable enactment of antisesquipedalianism.

The being listening to their instructor were quite phlegmatic.

I love reading your posts, too.Thanks very much.