Arnold Zwicky's Blog

A fair number of people dislike the word blog, to varying degrees (from mere disapproval to something approaching full-blown word rage). Some of the objections seem to be mostly visceral, others are backed by reasons.

Of the first sort:

“What’s Lewis Black mad about now?” Larry King asks the Daily Show frequenter and comedian-author-actor, and the answer is: blogs! “I will not blog… I hate the word ‘blog,’ it sounds like a condition.” (link)

Of the second sort, here’s David Giacalone, concerned about the “language legacy” the digital community will leave behind and calling for “an ethics and aesthetics of language creation”:

We have an obligation to craft a nomenclature that makes sense within the context of our langage and that — as much as possible — is aesthetically pleasing (easy on the ears and eyes).

Of course, language must and should evolve, but new words and terminology should be built upon root forms that have some meaning within the history of our language.  “Automobile” made sense (a vehicle that moves by itself — no horses needed, with the root words being the Greek for self and the Latin for move).  “Telephone” has its roots in the Greek words for distant and voice.   Even a techie term like “kluge” has real roots in an actual language, as explained here.  (It’s the German word for clever and is used when one has found a clever, even if homely, way to solve a problem with the tools on hand.)     In contrast, “blog” has no linguistic, historical, or cultural frame of reference.

Perhaps, most teens (or even aging geeks) don’t care whether the jargon they create has lasting linguistic appeal — indeed, they often want to use terminology that is edgy, offensive or cliquish.   But language-lovers and serious users of words should care — as should those who want the new concepts and tools of technology to be readily accessible to a broad public.

There is no good reason to leave a language legacy such as the four-letter word “blog”.

… As new formats and technologies are created, let’s remember that we are also creating and sharing a verbal legacy.   If the goal is better communication that leads to better understanding and wider use of the new inventions, jargon and lingo and four-letter neologisms just won’t do. (link)

To sum up Giacalone’s objections to blog:

1. It’s a neologism, an innovation.

2. It’s a clipping, rather than a word with a proper etymology and morphological strtucture.

3. It’s short (a “four-letter word”, in fact).

4. It’s jargon (or slang).

5. It’s fashionable, especially among the young and the nerds.

(Objections like these are all over the peeve world — trotted out against any number of words, especially verbings, nounings, back-formations, and clippings.)

Since Giacalone wrote, in 2003-04, blog has pretty much carried the day, though there are still people who fastidiously use web journal or web diary instead.

Insofar as Lewis Black gives a reason for his dislike, it has to do with the sound of the word; plenty of other people find its sound troublesome. I see two lines of objection here:

6. It sounds like vomiting. (A number of sites say this.)

7. It evokes associations with other bl- words: blob, blood, blather, blase, blah, blabber, blubber, bloat, etc. (Of course, there are plenty of bl- words that are affectively neutral or positive.)

For many people, these sound-based objections might, of course, be rationalizations for judgments based on considerations like 1-5.

This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Peeving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.