Crenellated Flotsam

If you ask me, the word awesome has pretty much lost all of its oomph.

I guess I can see why it became so popular with the kids, who are almost always at the forefront of changes in lanuguage and usage, but that doesn’t help me feel better about losing another perfectly fine word.

Over my life, I’ve seen quite a few words come and go, change meaning, or take over slang and become popular. Some, like gay, have had their meaning restricted, with no new word popping up to take their old place and meaning, which reduces our language by exactly one word. Others, such as jungle, have become politically incorrect and necessarily replaced by cold, dry, descriptive phrases (tropical rainforest) that have absolutely no emotional response. Sure, I may picture the same thing as before, but tropical rainforest doesn’t bring up memories of drums or all those movies I saw as a kid.

After a few days of rain, we’ve had a couple of sunshine here in Los Angeles. It was bright and sunny earlier this morning, but now clouds have returned and I changed from shorts to long pants. When the sun pops out, I can turn my face toward it and feel its warmth, and trying to fathom the enormous power of something that far away being felt by me and making a noticeable difference astounds me.

The explosive power of the sun is awesome. It gives me pause, causes me to feel awe, in a way no slang use of the word even approaches. A new song or remarkable play in a sporting event doesn’t make me feel that way, but without thinking, that’s the word we use to describe them. Awesome has now become simply filler, much like uh or like, added to speech or writing but adding nothing to the idea being brought forth other than “I like this” or “I think this is good.”

I thought it was bad when incredible became cheapened by use and went from its original “impossible to believe or credit” to doubtful or, worse, unlikely. I hadn’t realized that language needed to change to eliminate the nuances our individual words were invented to convey, but I guess that’s the way it goes.

It’s not awesome, this evolution, it’s erosion.