By Danny Tyree

As a writer, I can't deny harboring an appreciation for the richness of slang, metaphors, similes and colloquialisms.

And yet...there's something not quite rational about the agitators who force our language to evolve. ("Come on, participle! Crawl up on dry land! That gerund is beating you!")

There is an undisputed utility to manufactured terms such as "gerrymander," "carpetbagger" and "flyover country," but other linguistic innovations have been more frivolous. (Society's onetime fascination with "cutting a rug" and "bees' knees" did little to prevent the offshoring of textile jobs or our current pollination crisis, for example.)

The world has long needed more foster parents, a pathway to peace and a cure for cancer. Instead, we've had a procession of aspiration-challenged individuals who think they're due a Nobel Prize because they decided money should be "dough," coffee........

© El Dorado News Times