arnie states in Links for linguaphiles that:

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A pirated word is one that has been twisted by a political or commercial group for their own selfish purposes. The hotel industry knew what it was doing (well, probably) when years ago it decided that it would call its patrons "guests." Sounds good, but it means the opposite

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This is a great topic I don't want to have overlooked.

My personal dislike is the word "check" as in the waitress will bring my check when I am done eating. No.....she will bring a bill to me. Unless she is paying me for eating there, that is!

You can no longer buy eggs that are "small, medium, or large." Instead, they are "large, extra large, or jumbo." And similarly with your choices of coffee-cup size at one of the coffee boutiques.

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Originally posted by shufitz:
You can no longer buy eggs that are "small, medium, or large." Instead, they are "large, extra large, or jumbo." And similarly with your choices of coffee-cup size at one of the coffee boutiques.

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That's a variation on something that has puzzled me for years. When I was a child sliced bread could be bought as thin sliced, medium sliced and thick sliced. That made perfect sense to me. Somewhere along the line the thin sliced vanished leaviving only medium and thick sliced. In what sense can the word "medium" describe something at the bottom end of a range?
If they want only two grades surely thin and thick would make much more sense.

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

I rank sliced bread alongside Budweiser and processed cheese slices in my catalogue of foodstuffs.

How can you make a serious sandwich with such fluffy flavourless and thoroughly unpleasant stuff as your usual sliced white loaf?

Richard English

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Originally posted by Richard English:
I rank sliced bread alongside Budweiser and processed cheese slices in my catalogue of foodstuffs.

How can you make a serious sandwich with such fluffy flavourless and thoroughly unpleasant stuff as your usual sliced white loaf?

Richard English

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Doesn't alter my language point though, does it ?

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

"The hotel industry knew what it was doing (well, probably) when years ago it decided that it would call its patrons "guests."

And the health spa has its "clients".

I posted this in Arnie's Linguaphile thread, but I have been fighting my profession for years for using the word "client" instead of "patient". Nurses think "patient" sounds too dependent, which I suppose is true. Yet, what the physicians and physical therapists call "patients", we call "clients". Just doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, Bob, I agree with you about 2 types of bread being labelled as "thick" and "thin." Now, in the U.S. thin bread is very popular because of kilocalories (since this is a word board I thought I should be accurate with the terminology. Calorie, of course, is technically wrong.)

"Calorie, of course, is technically wrong."

It is? Howso?
(I learn something new every day here.)

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Originally posted by shufitz:
You can no longer buy eggs that are "small, medium, or large." Instead, they are "large, extra large, or jumbo." And similarly with your choices of coffee-cup size at one of the coffee boutiques.

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You may not be able to buy those eggs but they still do exist. The powers-that-be have definite standards outlining the difference between, say, a "jumbo" and an "extra large." Consumer demand (or, more precisely, lack thereof) is why you rarely see "medium" eggs on the grocers' shelves.

Two sidenotes:

1.) The smallest sized egg is labled a "pee-wee" and is usually the result of a very young hen's first efforts in egg production. I'd love to see a restaurant somewhere offer "pee-wee fried eggs."

2.) Grocers originally got that name because they sold things by the gross.

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It is? Howso?

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A calorie is the amount of energy to raise the temperature of 1 mL of water, at 15 degrees C, by 1 degree C. However, the amount of energy involved in the metabolism of food is fairly large. Therefore, a kilocalorie, or 1000 calories, is used. Scientfic books, for example, will call this a Calorie (capital "c") or a kilocalorie. However, in the lay literature, we still call it a calorie, which is technically wrong.

I used to drive my students to distraction by insisting that they use the correct terminology.

How about Starbucks, and THEIR sizes?

small = tall
grande = medium
venti = large

Marketing, marketing.....

Lori, so wonderful to see you posting again!

How about the restaurants that sell drinks in large and supersize only?

We have a cafe in Buffalo that instead of having orders be "for here" or"to go", they are either "parked" or "on wheels".:P

Salespeople are no longer salesmen or saleswomen or even salesclerks. They are now "sales associates" or just "associates."

Tinman

or "account managers".

My garbage is collected weekly by "sanitation engineers."

And the erstwhile housewife is now promoted to "domestic engineer," in much the same way that high school classes in cooking and sewing have long been termed "home economics."

When i was in school, i had "technology" class instead of woodshop.

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Salespeople are no longer salesmen or saleswomen or even salesclerks. They are now "sales associates" or just "associates."

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And let's not forget that there are no longer 'customers', they're referred as to as 'guests'.

... and in medicine those receiving care have [d]evolved from "patients" to "members" (of an insurance plan) to "covered lives" in an HMO. Shudder.

That's even worse than someone in the social service/counseling field dealing with not "patients" but "clients." But not very much.

I have never heard of "covered lives", thank heavens! I have always fought the nursing use of "client" (losing battle, I'm afraid), but "covered lives" I couldn't live with!

WinterBranch, I don't know how you feel about it, but I hate it when the department store clerk (yes, I say "clerk"!) calls me his/her guest. I am the customer--not a guest

We have a cafe in Buffalo that instead of having orders be "for here" or"to go", they
are either "parked" or "on wheels".:P
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When someone asks me, "For here or to go?" and I'm eating the garbage on-premises, I reply, "Both. You wouldn't want me to eat it here, then leave it here, would you?"

As for that assinine Starbucks B.S., on the rare occasion that I patronize one of those places, I say, "small, or medium, or large," refusing adamantly to buy into their silly size mis-description.

Asa the curmudgeon

Does anyone remember Godfrey Cambridge? My God, he was funny. He comes to mind here because it was he who introduced me to the word and the concept of euphemism. At the age of 12 or 14 or so, I heard the following on one of his comedy LP's (and LP's - remember them?) and had to hit the dictionary to get the joke:


I was on a flight coming in from New York when the pilot came on the intercom and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have lost the service of our second power plant. Please keep your seats."

I stood up and screamed, "'Second power plant'?! Don't be euphemistic, dammit, that's an engine! We May Die!!