Word of the Day

by tess

Judginess: the quality that permits superior beings to distinguish Good versus Evil.

To paraphrase The Great Colbert, some of you wordinistas might disparage judginess, but I say unto you: Cast not the first glass house lest ye get stoned! If the Colbert Nation can get truthiness into the OED, then Gretchen and I can use judginess in our blog. So there.

And so we shall provide to you the fruits of our judginess-pertise.

Examples of Good:
Wine
Online shopping
HoHos
Slandering co-workers’ fashion choices
Grilled cheese
Wearing pajamas until they walk themselves to the washer
Wine (Yeah, it’s that good! Shut up.)

Examples of Evil:
Sneaky floormat sellers
Being felt up by Russian dressmakers
Jumpsuits
Slow-to-close elevator doors
Parties
Chipmunk-eating pets
The sound of 1,000 Barbie dolls running across the floor in plastic high heels

Gretchen and I have few mutual friends. But one of our common acquaintances, we’ll call him “John” (since that’s his name), swears that when he was a child the word Judgment was spelled Judgement.

Upon hearing this, one might think that John’s a buffoon. He’s not, he’s just misguided. Like so many, many, many other men. Fortunately he had G and me to set him straight. Through the peels of laughter and general rolling around on the floor holding our stomachs and wiping our tears, Gretchen and I informed “John” that judgment has always been spelled with one e, not two.

I know this because Sister Satanica, the Typing teacher, drilled into our empty 15-year old heads the words we would surely need to know how to spell correctly in our future lives as good Catholic wives and mothers: accommodate, annulment, embarrass, grateful, judgment, maintenance, possession, retribution, sincerely, truly, and vacuum.

But back to “John.” I have a few theories about why he thinks the word might have evolved from Judgement to Judgment.

1: He grew up watching the original Japanese Iron Chefs on FoodTV. Toward the end of the show, the word JUDGEMENT is splashed across the screen in 800 bajillion point type.

2: He had a British teacher who also taught him: colour, arse, organise, barrister, queue, and knickers.

3: He was mistaken and didn’t like being corrected by a couple of grilled cheese-scarfing know-it-all doofuses.

I think we can safely rule out number 2. And at the time “John” was new to the office and trying to be our friend, so number 3 is iffy at best. Which leads us to number 1. And, coincidentally, to one of my pet theories.

Warning: Crazy elderly person rant below. Those who wish to remain rant-free, move along with your day now. I repeat: Look Away from the Rant.

(Ascending rant platform)
Like so many others who walked uphill both to and from school in the driving blizzards of south Florida, I grew up in a simpler time and place. Sex didn’t kill you, although your parents did if they found out. Soft-core drugs didn’t kill you, although your parents did if they found out. And even dirty books were edited.

The more frequently we see words spelled wrong (or hear phrases used incorrectly), the more difficult it becomes to recognize properly spelled words (or properly used phrases).

To wit, someone who hears “a whole nother” on a daily basis cannot identify that as improperly used English. Similarly, one who hears “should’ve” might not be able to differentiate “should of” from “should have” if he/she does not read.

And here’s the tricky part. The more frequently that person reads “could of” and “should of” in their unedited glory (i.e., on the Internet), the further reinforced the improper English becomes.

Only it’s a thousand times worse than that. Because the unedited sources (the Internet) also reinforce the use of sentences formed by abbreviations and emoticons rather than punctuation or capitalization, children and young adults who do not read properly edited materials cannot possibly be expected to differentiate between proper English and colloquialisms (aka that crap on the web).

Am I employing my self-appointed judginess to declare The Interwebs evil? No, obviously I am not. Nor will I be convinced that a brain-numbing, consistent bombardment of webspeak (via so-net sites, blogging, chatrooms, etc.) can be compared to a healthy, consistent regimen of edited literature.

Here endeth the rant.
(Descending terminal o’ tirades)