Language

Earlier this week I had a conversation in which I used a colourful euphemism, and my conversee corrected me by supplanting it with the dull, blunt word it danced around. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I had always assumed that everyone knows what euphemisms stand for, otherwise they wouldn’t get used, or would be called symbolism or something fancy like that. When someone says ‘kicked the bucket,’ you know they don’t mean that someone literally walked up to a bucket an kicked it, you know that they expired, passed away, bit the dust, bought the farm, or otherwise died. (Please forgive me such a morbid example; euphemisms for death spring most readily to mind as there are a nearly unlimited supply.) I was also reminded of a point made by Daniel Handler in the interview to be found on the Bad Beginning audio book, in regards to the large words and sophisticated idioms found in the Snicket books:

It is really no fun to say ‘my, what a big truck’ when you can say ‘my, what a corpulent truck.’ The English language is filled with so many marvellous words that it seems a shame not to use the good ones. For instance, to say ‘the English language is filled with good words’ is not nearly as much fun as saying ‘the English language is filled with marvellous words.’ So I think Mr Snicket, like any author worth his salt, likes to use expressions like ‘worth his salt,’ rather than ‘like any author who is good.’

So, in the somewhat snarky spirit of clarity and straightforwardness, I now bring you the first in what might possibly be a series of ‘Cut the Crap and Get To It!’

The original:

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

And the honest truth:

Man is really something. Being smart makes him good. He can do a lot of things. The shape he is and the way he moves is good. Whether doing something or not, he’s impressive, good-looking, and better than the other animals. But what is this thing to me? Man doesn’t make me happy – and girls don’t either, you perverts.