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Last Rant of the Year

Okay, as my final rant for this year, I’m going to set some things straight. There are some oxymoronic statements out there that I feel need to be corrected – heavy on the “moronic”.

New and Improved: Okay, this one I’ve never understood. Let’s break this down… if something is ‘new’ it has never existed before. If it is ‘improved’ then is now different than it was before and, presumably, better. Something cannot be both ‘new’ and ‘improved’ at the same time. It was new last month and THEN we improved it… that’s fine. Please don’t say it’s new AND improved.

Quick tangent on ‘new’: How old can something be and still be considered new? I hear that on the radio sometimes and feel that it’s incorrect to call a 6-month old song ‘new’. I just don’t know what the cutoff is. Moving along…

Over and Out: It’s so silly hearing this when it occurs in a military movie. You see two guys talking on radios and one gives a command and the other guy responds “Over and out”. You’re going to find it silly as well once I explain. In radio communications ‘over’ means, “I am done with my message and I pass the ability of responding OVER to you”. The command of ‘out’ means “I have given my message and am ending transmission”. So when you say ‘over and out’ you’re basically saying, “What is your response? Goodbye!” all in one breath. Silly, isn’t it?

Forever and Ever: Forever means “a limitless time”. If it has no limit, what is the ‘ever’ doing on there? Ever means “at any time”. You’re tacking some amount of time to the end of something that has no limit. That’s like giving a quarter to Bill Gates – it just doesn’t make any sense.

And now my favorite…

Expectorant and Suppressant: I was recently sick and had a bit of a cough. I went looking through the drug store for some cough medicine. I saw the Expectorants (which force you to cough out, or expectorate, the congestive material) and the Suppressants (which suppress a cough). We’re good so far. Then I see some cough syrups that are labeled as both an Expectorant AND a Suppressant. Isn’t that like blowing and sucking at the same time? I don’t understand. How can they do both?

I know the English language is not perfect. It just seems to me we should slowly clean these imperfections out of the language and make it better. These are just a few examples, I’m sure there are others.

Is this year over yet?

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