Some of these words were once looked down upon, and now we use them in our day-to-day conversations.
The beauty of any language is that it is ever-changing. The vocabulary you are using today will be outdated tomorrow. Words that we find cringy and a bit offensive may be spoken without a second thought by coming generations. One of the changes that people are not so welcoming about is the spread of the jargon that was used to replace the simpler words that we already use. So, here are some of the words that were once considered horrible but now nobody pays attention anymore.
Interview
In the year 1931, the interview was deemed as a proper alternative to the word “contact”, but for some reasons, people were not very welcoming of the word, especially when it was used for asking questions by the press. It was described as a verb that was accepted in jest, then was denounced and afterwards, by some strange coincidence, people accepted it with resignation.
Optimism and Pessimism
These words came in vogue in the 1880s and people were not very enthusiastic about their use. Some magazine columnists felt that the word pessimism gets thrown away at us at every small and big thing. People felt the words were not meant to be taken very lightly, and they are in no way exact synonyms of despondency and cheerfulness.
Purist
Nobody had burning hate for the word than a journalist named Godfrey Turner in the year 1883. In fact, he absolutely went on a rampage against the word. He exclaimed that the word is an attempt to be a noun but comes out as a raw adjective. He even went to lengths of saying that whosoever committed tried to black and white this word would have to repent for a deed that would offend verbal purity forever.
Reliable
An interesting review of a new dictionary of English in the year 1860 shuns the importance that the author gives to the word “reliable”. They even called the word “superfluous” and believed it to be not worthy of the idiomatic synonym “trustworthy”. The reviewer adds that it is pleasing to hear that the dictionary also explains that why this deformed word does not make any sense. Thereviewer added that the word they should be adopting instead of this should be reliuponable, which translates to ludicrous.
What do you think? Which words do you think are unwanted, and you would like to replace?
