This school year, I have been copy editing for our student newspaper.
It's great. I love it. No, really. Fixing commas, italicizing album names, and correcting grammatical errors - it all sends chills up my spine. Most of the time, the articles are well-written - not too many things to fix.
But then, there's the Arts Section.
My question for all of these musically-inclined, drinking-out-of-their-mason-jars writers is this:
WHY DO YOU INVENT WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC?
I understand that you listen to a vast variety of music, and you probably run out of the usual adjectives to describe it, but sometimes I think that the words submitted in the Oxford English Dictionary can do the job.
Here are some of the latest submissions:
Turntablist
Freestyler
Hypemen
Soundscape
Mixtape (this is really two words - not one, in case anybody was wondering)
Anthemic
Eighties-ish
Synths (short for synthesizers - and to be honest, I've let this one go because it keeps coming up again and again)
Bassline (again - two words. Not one)
You guys. Merriam and Webster had it right the first time. Your music can't be so cool that it requires a brand new word to describe it.
But Lianne,
ReplyDeleteYou aren't taking the evolution of words into account. Merriam-Webster adds newords into the dictionary everyear! I mean, say for example I wanted to describe a beetle as shinybrown. Perhaps the new word shinybrown will come to replace the previous words of shiny and brown. Maybe shinybrown will become the new catchphrase, like "That was so shinybrownian!"
Lianne. I much appreciate you FINALLY updating so that I could properly creep on you. Not to mention providing me with a giggle at this ungodly hour of 7:30 a.m. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteTommy,
ReplyDeleteFirst - wow. Someone other than a member of my hall just looked at my blog. Mind blown.
Second, I appreciate the evolution of words. I do. Just not ones that don't need to be invented. "Synths" I let slide, because it makes sense - "synthesizers" is kind of a long word to say. However, "hypemen"? Nuh uh. Not practical.