My four-and-a-half-year-old daughter Scout asked me if I thought her stuffed dog was “cute.”
I told her I don’t know what that word means.
“It means funny and pretty,” she said.
As good a definition as any, and it helped me think about why I hate the word “cute”: I like my humor funny and my beauty pretty. Mixing them waters each down.
Some words make our language banal, and other words make us less articulate. ("Lazy" comes to mind; calling someone "lazy" is almost always a way to duck out of a deeper explanation of the person’s general unwillingness.)
What words do you wish didn’t exist?
Okay curmudgeon-man!
To paraphrase the (I thinkit was) NRA:
“Words don’t make the language banal, people make language banal!”
All words have definitions and proper usages (even cute!). You can’t blame the word for the fact that a person doesn’t use it properly, and I’m not in favour of getting rid of words – it’s that “slippery slope” thing.
Although, now that I think about it, I would turf that moronic “chat language” in its entirety if I had the power to.
When I was about 12, everything was “neat.” I mean EVERYTHING. My father growled at me once that if I didn’t find another word to use he’d FIND me one.
Well, Kristen, I don’t think we have to worry about anyone taking me up on my suggestion to ban “cute.” (They’re more likely to dismiss my suggestion by calling it “cute.”)
Cute—like “neat” in its day—is used entirely too often, and it speaks to a banal culture that doesn’t know what beauty is and wouldn’t dare call something beautiful even if they did.
So they call every goddamned thing “cute.”
Nice.
Yes, the same people who say “cute” a lot say “nice” all the time.
Here’s another one: “Interesting.”
A dodge for bullshitters everywhere:
They don’t like a guy, they call him “interesting.” They couldn’t care less about the field of education, they call it “interesting.” They don’t know what to think about a movie they just saw, they report that it was “interesting.”
“Interesting” isn’t.
Well, if it helps any, when I don’t like a movie, I’m quite willing to say:
“That movie was unbelieveable boring [The English Patient], or pandering and whiny [Brokeback Mountain], or gratuitously violent [The Matrix] or ridiculously profane [Pulp Fiction – I use the word Fuck as much as the next person, but even I don’t need to see an entire movie that uses almost NO other words in two whole hours!]
I don’t understand people who use the same ambivalent words like “neat” or “intersting” to describe everything. When we have such a colourful, diverse and eclectic language like English, that’s just FULL of words that are pefectly descriptive of anything you want to describe,how can they BEAR to use the same unimaginative, boring one over and over…Oh, look – HERE’S a proper use of “lazy”.
One of the best days of my life was when our babysitter was astounded that our five-year-old son didn’t know what the word NICE meant. I always make a point to say, “That was kind” or “That was thoughtful” or “That was helpful,” so when she said “That was kind” he asked her what that meant.
I hate the word nice. Hate it. Abhor it. Detest it. You get the picture.
David, beauty is rarer than cuteness. Maybe that’s why more people and things are deemed “cute” than “beautiful.” I really can’t imagine anyone saying a sunset or a Caravaggio are “cute.”
That’s just the point, Jane. Everything is potentially “cute.”
I don’t trust a word that can be applied to a car, a sweater, an apartment, a dog, a dolphin, a poem or a child.
Can we agree to define “cute” as “delightfully pretty or dainty; obviously contrived to charm; precious”?
If we can, my point is that “cute” is what many things ARE these days. Manufacturers go for “cute” because cute things appeal to more people than beautiful things do. Girls try to be “cute” because they aren’t seasoned enough to be beautiful. Artists paint “cute” landscapes and portraits because they lack the talent to paint beautiful stuff. Scout probably used precisely the right word to describe her stuffed dog.
My problem with all this is not the word but the fact (as I see it) that much of the world has come to PREFER cuteness to beauty.
I guess I’m not so bothered by words with multiple applications–after all, “small” could also be applied to your entire list, David. Overused words get tiresome, but, like the recipes I recycle for dinner, there are words we incorporate into our speech and writing that we don’t even realize we’re overusing until someone points out that I’ve made pasta dishes five times in the last two weeks, or that I say “just” in just about every other sentence.
What bothers me more than generic words are words that have the opposite effect to their intent, but that the speaker likes because it’s part of the lingo of the day. “Chill” is one of those words. Have you ever heard someone say “chill” or “chill out” to you and not wanted to strangle that person? It’s condescending, and nearly always accompanied by a smug smirk to imply that the speaker is beyond any display of emotion (like the one you, presumably, are consumed with). That word from a spouse is grounds for… well, I don’t know for what. Every image that comes to mind is illegal and involves a prison sentence in the end.
But I think there’s another aspect to overused words like cute and neat and nice. There are a lot of people in the world who don’t have the vocabulary that the participants in this forum have. I grew up in a community that was barely literate, for the most part, and aside from vulgarities (which was one aspect of language where there seemed to be a vast knowledge of vocabulary), there wasn’t a broad range of words handy. If someone used “irascible” in a sentence, there would be no comprehension.
Scout has exceptional parents, and so probably knows a great many more words than her wee peers. But cute is a short word with multiple applications, the perfect word for a small vocabulary. I think that’s why we hear so many words applied so broadly. Better read or educated people have no excuse–it’s just a lack of rigor or effort. But there are a lot of people who truly lack the vocabulary.
So there’s the view from my cubicle! I’m glad you’re back and posting again, David. I’ve missed that mind of yours.
“My problem with all this is not the word but the fact (as I see it) that much of the world has come to PREFER cuteness to beauty.”
Yes, Jane; great comment.
Joan, Kristen, I think this–this communal fear and discouragement of beauty specifically and greatness in general–explains the “cute,” “nice” and “neat” phenomenon better than laziness or lack of vocabulary.
We’re a culture of tater-tot casserole eaters.
(Joan, good to have–good to have all of you–you posting here again.)
Tater-tot casserole! I’ve never made that in my life! Perhaps I should replace one of those endless pasta dishes with a tater-tot masterpiece. This may be my personal path to greatness–you think?
A good tater-tot casserole is a thing of beauty, David.
Leave it to the upper Midwesterner to set me straight on the TTC.
Jane, you’ll have to prove that to me someday.
Damn straight! As wise Jane indicated, there is nothing like a good tater-tot (plus it’s just a fun word to say out loud – try it – you’ll see!), and I demand you take back that slanderous dissing of these tasty tots David!
Otherwise, we’ll be forced to start an NGO or something in protection of the tater-tot reputation.
This, of course, would involve boycotts, and marches, and email campaigns, and I, for one, just don’t have the damn energy for all that, so do us all a favour and just have a tater-tot, will ya??
Okay, a revision:
“All humans revere a good tater-tot casserole. Would that we could generate the same passion for beauty and greatness in this world.”
Better?
Hooray! Now I can forgo any taxing activism in favour of a few drinks tonight. Thank you, my friend – you are a …
I was gonna say a scholar and a gentleman, but…
You rock!
Sorry, but I can’t help myself. Tater-tot casseroles are wonderful, but they’re just one segment of that wonderful world of comfort food collectively known as “hot dish”. Yum!