There used to be many words and phrases that annoyed me, constructions such as “110%” and “intestinal fortitude,” but those instances seem so innocuous now that other words have begun to be used half to death (to the death of the word, that is), words like fascist and nazi and racist and whatever happens to be the phobe of the day.
I don’t know if I’m getting used to words that are so overused that they’ve become meaningless or if I’m less critical or . . . who knows. All I know is that there are now fewer words that irk me. And yet there is one word that I will never, ever use. Will never, ever hear without my teeth gritting or feeling the word scrape down my back like some unseen claw.
I can avoid other words, even the most hateful and prevalent, because people I’m around in real life don’t use them, and if I’m reading the words online, I can quickly skim past them before they sneak in under my skin.
But there is that one word, a word I can barely manage to even type, so I’ll close my eyes and hope I get it right. “Veggies.” There. I did it. Whew! The very sight, the very sound of that mawkish word gags me, but it is now universal. It’s as if no one knows how to say or write or spell the word “vegetables” anymore. I mean that literally. I am the only person I know who says “vegetables.” I can understand urging small children to eat their “veggies,” but when said by an adult to an adult, it seems . . . disrespectful.
Are vegetables really that onerous that they need an infantile nickname? Are we in such a hurry that we can’t manage to say the whole of the venerable “vegetable?” And it is a venerable word. It comes from the Medieval Latin word vegetabilis, meaning “growing, flourishing, or full of life.” It was used from the Middle Ages on to denote all plants, not just edible ones, because plants are capable of life and growth as opposed to inert minerals.
And so what do we have today instead of life and growth and vigor? The cringeworthy “veggies,” which means absolutely nothing.
I realize I am one of the few purists left when it comes to words. Oh, I know the argument, that language is ever evolving, and I understand that. I would just prefer that it evolved around other words I don’t have to hear every day even from people I like.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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