5 Responses to “Word aversion”

  1. -Ed.

    It doesn’t count as an aversion by the terms of the article, but I utterly loathe the verb surveil. Just hate it. And the worst part is that it’s a perfectly reasonable back-formation that is older than I am, fills a need, and is pretty much unobjectionable except for the objection that I hate it.

    Thanks,
    -Ed.

    reply
    • Jed

      I’m belatedly curious whether you can characterize what you hate about it. Is it the sound? The spelling? The back-formationness of it? Something else? Are there other words that you react that way to?

      reply
      • -Ed.

        It’s the back-formation-ness, I think, and also something about it smacks of euphemism and mealy-mouthedness and buck-passing and all of what I think people dislike about governmentese. But mostly the back-formation, from survey to surveillance to surveil.

        Thanks,
        -E.

        reply

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