Some words just feel gross, in the same way some fabrics make your skin crawl or when your toenail catches on the bedsheet.
By Caro Cooper
If you love to curl up with a hot choccy in your jammies after a scrummy dinner, chances are we’re not friends. Don’t get me wrong, your evening activities sound pretty solid to me, but you, as a person – you’re far from it. People who abbreviate words and add an e-sounding suffix make me feel weird. It’s the kind of feeling that makes me rub behind my ears while staring hard at the ground as I will it to swallow me whole.
Did you ever stay over at a friend’s house when you were a little kid and the way their family did things – whether it was how they watched TV, the soap they used or what they ate for dinner – made you feel slightly homesick? It’s a deeply unsettling ‘no, this is wrong’ feeling. That’s the feeling these words give me. This is wrong. I do not like it. I want to go home.
To be clear, not all abbreviated words make me want to punch a teddy bear. I am, after all, Australian. I will raz to the servo for a pack of smokes (I actually wouldn’t because I’m asthmatic, but you get the idea). I shorten words; I make up words; I do not speak the Queen’s English. None of that bothers me. You can say every second word incorrectly
