Please pardon a poor editor, but “upskill” is not a real word. I don’t care what Merriam-Webster says; it is not. Whatever adman who coined it, and whichever PR exec approved it, may upthrust it.
Here’s another abomination: An online (of course) pitch trying to sell me “drinkware.”
Not cups, not glasses, not beer steins or mugs or flagons: drinkware.
I don’t care how many hits you get if you Google drinkware, there is no such word. Not in this best of all possible worlds.
Such assaults on the English language should be punished by fines and jail time at hard labor.
Look: I know that admen for online companies are, by definition, not human. That’s why I feel free to insult them. Does a stone care if I insult it? Does a gob of phlegm? They do not. So the admen who devise these nonwords may kindly stuff their bullshit up their nomenclature.
As a writer and editor, I feel an allegiance to the English language. I make no claim that in the 40 years I have wielded these feeble powers I have enhanced our language. I do claim that I have not abused it. I protect it.
One way I protect it is by refusing to allow such assaults upon the language into any page with which I am associated. And shall until the day they strangle me to death with adverbs.
Here’s another obscenity, from a recent story in The Associated Press: spillage.
Spillage?
You mean a spill of some sort? Was it oil? Gasoline? Milk?
“Oh, baby! You caused a spillage of milk! Now I must upmop it.”
Again, despite the benediction conferred upon this nonword by the satanic Merriam-Webster, I insist, there is no such word. And should the derelict automatons who edit the Merriam-Webster dictionary say me nay, I would respond, as Voltaire did: I may not agree with what you say, so up your vocabulary.
Look: English is a flexible language. You can do a lot of things with it, if you know and understand it and can wield it correctly. But just because you claim to know and understand an instrument, that does not give you leeway, or permission, to wield it for harm. Nor should you.
Take, for example, the saxophone. I know that instrument. I have practiced it and played it for tens of thousands of hours over the years. I made my living with it, back when the world was young. I understand the saxophone pretty well. But does that give me leave to wield my baritone sax with my brawny shoulders and smash it over the head of a blind beggar? It does not.
All I am asking our admen, and the editors of Merriam-Webster, is this: Do not abuse your powers. Do not approve, or allow, admen’s bullshit. Do not allow caffeinated putterers and adventurers to coin nonwords by appending a prefix or suffix to a perfectly good word: a word that can stand by itself, on its own syllables.
If you do allow this, editors, you are not just cluttering out language with nonwords, you are contributing to its ruin; you are making our language ugly.
Ah, I hear you say, but did not Shakespeare invent, or introduce, more than 1,700 words to the English language?
Yes, he did. Among them lonely, titanic, monumental, lackluster, bandit, critic, uncomfortable, cold-blooded, bedroom, embrace, generous, excitement, useful, and … but why go on? These are good words, solid words, words that live today.
But let me tell you, admen, Merriam-Webster, et al.: Y’all ain’t Shakespeare.
Spillage? Signage? Upskill? Drinkware?
Has anyone in his or her right mind ever uttered such blasphemies aloud? In the company of friends or enemies? Alone, in a lonely bedroom? Even in a ghastly nightmare?
I doubt it. And if, unable to sleep, in the gloom of the night, they did utter such words, or invent one: No wonder they couldn’t sleep.
Repent! The end of this column is coming soon.
(Courthouse News columnist Robert Kahn can recite the Jabberwocky backwards. He did so, at a poetry slam in San Francisco, to mild applause.)