Resurrecting interesting – and often amusing – vocabulary and expressions no longer used – but still appropo (with a bit of editorial comment).
Just as “there are no old movies [or books] just good movies you haven’t seen,” – Peter Bogdanovich; so are there old words you haven’t used that are even more appropriate for use today!
Balderdash:
An archaic term meaning something that doesn’t make sense, complete and utter nonsense. Though Merriam Webster offers many synonyms, the pre-PC dictionary’s last definition said it was British for bullshit – heard mostly from within the hallowed halls of governments and the mouths of politicians; identified by their lips moving – especially in front of camera and microphone. Think Back to the Future when “Biff” is knocked unconscious into a wagon of horse apples and rises to spit horse manure from his mouth.
Poppycock:
First used in 1852 originally from the Dutch dialect pappekak – literally soft dung. Often used in conjunction with Balderdash (see above). Its use has been discouraged by the British monarchy (for obvious reasons).
Platitude: a sanctimonious cliche’; a statement that is not only old and overused but often over moralistic and imperious. Platitudes have been criticized as giving a false impression of wisdom, making it easy to accept falsehoods. It is a statement seen as trite or meaningless aimed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. The statement may be true, but its meaning has been lost due to its excessive use as a thought terminating cliche’. Used by politicians to confuse both the media and the public in order to avoid personal responsibility for crises they created, ignored, or can’t resolve (see: 9/11 Commission Report, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David Stockman; the Commission Report on the 2008 Mortgage Crisis , The COVID-19 Pandemic, etc. (see also: Gavin Newsom, the L.A. Fire)
Jargogle: to confuse or mix things up. (see: Joe Biden)
Surd: lacking sense; irrational. (see: Joe Biden)
Semantic Satiation: a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. (see: Congress’ reform)
Zabernism: the misuse of military power; aggression; bullying. After Zabern, German word for Saverne, a village in Alsace, France. (see: Political-Military-Industrial Complex; Pentagon, George Bush, Jr. Major General Yoo, and whoever the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is at the moment; and Undue Command Influence (UCI) in the Uniform Code of Military Justice
Kruppism: an eponym, coined after Alfred Krupp,1812-1887 German industrialist and armaments manufacturer (or Robert McNamara, Casper Weinberger, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,). It implies indiscriminate trade in arms and war profiteering. (see: Department of Defense, Political-Military-Industrial Complex, and Trading with the Enemy: An Expose’ of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949 by Charles Higham, 1983)
Profiteering: the act of making an excessive profit by taking advantage of a situation, often by selling goods in high demand at inflated prices. It can also refer to making an unreasonable profit on the sale of essential goods, particularly during times of emergency:
– Natural disasters: Stores charging high prices for water and batteries because they know the people need them.
– New Products: buying a lot of a new product and then selling it for a much higher price.
– Olympics: hotels charging exorbitantly higher prices during the Olympics.
– Big Pharma: charging higher prices for essential medicines because the company has a monopoly on the supply – and / or they have pigeon holed the medicines that will actually cure the disease. (see also: General Motors)
Profiteering is illegal in countries like the UK, Germany, and Austria. . . .
Cannonism: concentration of the means of power over the procedure and business in the hands of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. After Joseph G. Cannon, a Republican politician who served in the House for 46 years – ousted from the Committee on Rules (yes, there actually is a “committee on rules!). (see: Political Parties, UniParty)
Not to be confused with ‘canon‘ – a set of rules or traditions from an authoritative list of books or texts [like the Constitution] considered permanent guides to morality that are followed.
Sisyphean: tasks that are both laborious and futile. (see: Congressional Budget, Government Reform; or Trump Draining the Swamp)
Dystopia: a “fictional” society (you be the judge) or community that is extremely bad or frightening, where people live under a highly controlled, totalitarian system. The word comes from Latin prefix “dys” meaning “bad” and the word “utopia” a place that doesn’t exist. Characteristics of a dystopia are:
– Dehumanization: people lead wretched lives.
– Suppressed identity
– Lack of families
– Fear: of speaking one’s mind or acting freely
See: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – or Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, L.A., Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, or any other Red state or Sanctuary City)
Objectivism: a tenet that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans’ metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form that one can comprehend and respond emotionally. (see: The Ten Great Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler or, Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Communist Party, Socialism, the Democrat Party, The Left, Progressive, Hillary Clinton, Kamalla Harris)
Solipsism: from Latin solus “alone” and ipse “self”; the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. Holding that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. (see: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamallah Harris, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer, Democrat Party, Left and Right media talking heads; CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Newsmax, Fox News, Brian Kilmead)
