I was amused to hear on NPR yesterday that The New Yorker online had asked people for words that should be eliminated from the language. The winner, oddly, was "slacks."
A word that needs to be silenced should be one that is used frequently, and when was the last time you heard anyone - especially anyone under the age of 50 - refer to pants as slacks? My choice, as faithful readers of this blog will know, would have been what's in a pair of pants, namely "butt."
My amusement was caused by the fact that the longtime editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn, had a number of words he would not allow to appear in its pages. As a mnemonic device, staff writers came up with the following sentence, which I read to every writing class I teach (as an example of the power of words to annoy):
"Intrigued by the massive smarts of the balding, feisty, prestigious, workaholic tycoon, Tom Wolfe promptly spat on the quality photo above the urinal and tried to locate his gadget."
