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#46. 44 – Disarming Personality
50 Sep 08, 2010
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#45. 43 – Captive Audience
45 Sep 01, 2010
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#44. 42 -Taking Care Of Business
46 Aug 25, 2010
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#43. 41 – Meet and Greet
47 Aug 18, 2010
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#42. 40 – Here Comes the Cavalry
44 Aug 11, 2010
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#41. 39 – Spurred to Action
45 Aug 04, 2010
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#40. 38 – Here Comes Trouble
48 Jul 28, 2010
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#39. 37 – Different Views
56 Jul 14, 2010
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#38. 36 – Horse With A Name
48 Jul 07, 2010
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#37. 35 – Food For Thought
51 Jun 30, 2010
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#36. 34 – The Unkindest Cut
47 Jun 23, 2010
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#35. 33 – Farm Fresh
47 Jun 16, 2010
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#34. 32 – Business Plans
50 Jun 02, 2010
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#33. 31 – Desert Rose
49 May 26, 2010
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#32. 30 – Silent Commentary
48 May 19, 2010
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#31. 29 – Perils Of The Profession
43 May 12, 2010
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#30. 28 – You Don’t Need A Body
47 May 05, 2010
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#29. 27 – Executive Oversight
48 Apr 28, 2010
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#28. 26 – Menace To Merchandise!
48 Apr 21, 2010
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#27. 25 – Catastrophe To Commodity!
54 Apr 14, 2010
Whelmed but not overly so?
Weird discovery today: the word “overwhelmed” is redundant.
I mean first I was just looking up “whelmed” on writerly whim because I wasn’t 100% sure it was in the dictionary. Logically it should be, and yet I never hear someone saying how whelmed they are at work. Yet beyond confirming its existence, the dictionary provided the following definitons: “to submerge; engulf…to roll or surge over something, as in becoming submerged.”
And most notable of all: “to overcome utterly; overwhelm”
In other words (heh), the notions behind “whelm” and “overwhelm” are entirely the same, except the one in common usage adds an unnecessary modifier of two extra syllables. It’s like the people who say “irregardless” except in this case both words are in the dictionary and no one ever bats an eye at all of us who all these years have been basically expressing how whelmily whelmed we are. We are overoverwhelmed. It would arguably be more grammatically correct to phrase an extreme state of whelmedness as “I am so damn whelmed, dude!”
But the general populace would no doubt give you funny looks about that, the way William Safire gets funny looks when he orders “two Whoppers Junior” at Burger King (I suspect William Safire does not really frequent Burger King for meals, though, no matter his claims to the contrary).
So anyhow, another example of how being grammar police in the English language sometimes feels like you’re a corrupt cop, or maybe at best an honest cop trying to make their way in a corrupt system. How do you get out there every day and stamp on that new crop of “your an idiot”s and “the truth is out their”s when you know you’re ultimately defending an institution that is arguably broken to begin with?
It’s enough to leave one whelmed.
One thought on “544 – Hanker For A Hunker”
Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)
That feels like my life with my eyes these days …
“These goggles don’t got no magnification on ’em”