In a family with little children "thingy" is often used to refer to a boys anatomy. As, his thingy.
On a similar vein, "growies" is used in a laboratory to refer to something unknown that contaminates a Petri dish. In the home one might say, "Throw out that cheese, there are growies on it."
I remember someone here, maybe it was CJ, thinks that the word "thing" itself should never be used. He made such a good point that even now I try to be more precise than just saying "thing."
I remember someone here, maybe it was CJ, thinks that the word "thing" itself should never be used.
That's nice [sic]. Here we have a word with many meanings, and a part of the language for over 1500 years. Many languages have a word for thing. The Icelanders even named their parliament the Althing. Heidegger wrote extensibly about thing as a concept; Kant, even earlier wrote about the Ding an sich (the thing by itself). Early dialect linguists used to obsess over the word and the thing. Must we also rid our vocabulary of something or anything? And, just who is CJ? And why is he so reiphobic? Sigh.
I think it's just akin to my dislike of the word "nice" as its applied nowadays. I can almost always find a better word to use. It isn't just English either. One of my German teachers deplored his students use of "nett" (German for "nice") because it indicated to him that we were too lazy to try to think of the word we really wanted.
PS. What's "reiphobic"? It isn't in onelook.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
I think it's a good exercise to challenge yourself not to use one word or another from time to time, just to keep the old mental thesaurus limber. Once when I was covering an ice show for a newspaper long ago, my editor challenged me to write the story without using the word "graceful," and of course, there were many fine alternatives to same.
Agreeing with zmj, though, that no word should be banned absolutely. "That would be a bad thing."
WM
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
zmj, before starting the OEDILF, CJ used to post here quite often. I have just checked, in our advanced search function, to see if I could find that post of CJs. In fact, he has used the word thing 129 times here...so he couldn't hate the word that much! I may have misunderstood, and I will ask him about it in a PM. Bob, I do think it was similar to your dislike of nice, which I also remember talking about here.
I think it's just akin to my dislike of the word "nice" as its applied nowadays. I can almost always find a better word to use.
Whereas this is certainly true, simply because the word "nice" is imprecise that doesn't necessarily make it a bad word. There are times when imprecision isn't a bod thing.
When being generally complimetary about a person to another, it might be better to say, "He's a nice old chap" than to try to find a word (or more likely words) that will precisely describe the several ways in which the old chap is nice.
It is sufficient for the purposes of that conversation to express your view that the person concerned is someone about whom you have positive feelings.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
Geez, I don't know about the rest of you, but I am having trouble staying on top of Wordcraft these days. I guess that's a good thing!
I did email CJ about his problem with thing, and here is what he says:
"My dislike of the word 'thing' is not so much for the word itself but for its overuse when people are too lazy to use the correct words for what they're talking about. For example, when someone says, 'Hand me that thing on the thing, y'know, over by the thing,' I want to reach for the nearest ax."
I think most of us would agree with that attitude. His message makes me smile, and I realize I miss CJ's posts. He used to keep us all laughing.
While I can understand nice and thing to a point, I think very adds intensity. "Thank you very much!" means a lot more to me than "Thank you" or "Thank you much." Of course it can be overused.
