Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Let's All Ruminate Together

Pet Peeve: When someone has clearly been writing a manuscript and has been using the word "ruminate" a lot whilst writing the manuscript and then you have to sit through a meeting with this person and she uses the word "ruminate" incorrectly about six thousand times and it leaves you scratching your head wondering how in the fuck this person got to a position of any kind of prestige whatsoever.

The word "ruminate" means to continually think on, to a destructive end, something bad or unpleasant that one has experienced personally. It is usually associated with depression, and is one reason why people who are depressed (to a clinical level) stay depressed. Because they sit around thinking about shit and how shitty that shit is.

So, an example of an INcorrect usage of the word "ruminate" would be something like the following:

"Errm, hummm, I think we need a better word here but I can't think of one right now. So, let's ruminate on that for awhile and see what we come up with."

For clarification: "rumination" does not, at least connotatively, does NOT mean "thinking." They are not interchangeable, there are reasons for having the word "thinking" and all its derivatives, and having options that make sense and then choosing to go ahead and misuse a word that has its own form and function and meaning is ANNOYING.

Another example of misuse:

"erhmm, yes, I am a total bitchcakes and I am going to drown you in boring work that you don't want to do, because I can, so ruminate that up your ass, motherfucker!"

I can scarcely believe that an adult said that to me!

1 Comments:

Blogger Heartless Bitch said...

I know it doesn't make the situation BETTER, but this made me laugh really loud, guffawing laughs. So thanks for that.

9:54 PM  

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