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‘I’ll return anon’ — said the medieval knight. Your Amazon order says ‘arriving tomorrow by 8 PM.’ Anon was killed by precision. Let it rest.
Yonder is a word for a direction nobody needs a special word for. ‘Over there’ has three more letters but zero more confusion.
Wild blue yonder: good song lyric, bad word.
Hark only exists because ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’ has a good melody. You can’t retire it from the carol, but you can retire it from everything else.
Listen. Just say listen.
Lo and behold — the fossil expression. Nobody says ‘lo’ by itself. Nobody would miss it if it vanished.
Actually, nobody would notice.
E’er, ne’er, o’er — these aren’t words, they’re metrical cheats for poets who couldn’t make the line scan. Poetry doesn’t need special spellings to work.
Ever. Never. Over. Done.
Alas is 90% irony and 10% Shakespeare homework. Nobody earnestly says ‘alas’ when something sad happens. They say ‘well, shit.’
Retire.
‘All in favor say aye, all opposed say nay.’ — the only room in the building where ‘nay’ still has a job. Everywhere else: no.
Retire it to parliamentary procedure and lock the door.
Procure means get. Always has. ‘Procurement department’ sounds important. ‘Getting-stuff department’ sounds like a dad with a truck.
But the dad with a truck is more efficient. Vote Yes.
‘Regulate’ is what thermostats do. ‘Control’ is what you do. The word creates unnecessary separation between systems and people.
Control the temperature. Control the flow. Don’t regulate it unless you’re a government agency.
‘Remain’ is the word flight attendants use because ‘stay’ sounds like you’re talking to a dog. ‘Stay seated’ is perfectly clear. Americans already use it on domestic flights.
The world’s English teachers would thank us.
‘Select’ sounds fancier than ‘choose’ but means exactly the same thing. Nobody selects dinner. They choose dinner. Select is what dropdown menus do.
Let the computers keep it. Everyone else gets ‘choose.’
‘Transmit’ is what radios did in the 1920s. Today we send files, messages, data. Nobody transmits anything unless they’re filling out a customs form.
Send is faster, friendlier, and doesn’t sound like you’re wearing a headset.
Draught beer vs draft beer. One is how you order at a London pub. One is how the rest of the world writes it.
Even British breweries export ‘draft beer.’ The market already decided.
An airplane flies in air, not ‘aero.’ The Greek root was dropped in American English and nobody misses it.
Airplane is descriptive, phonetic, and shorter. Plane works too.
