My award for 2008 Wordy Wordilicious Word of the Year is:
tranche.
It describes an arcane financial instrument that symbolizes the economic collapse visited upon us by people using obscure words for even more obscure products. To round out the chimera obscura, news stories about the handout of up to $700 billion (to the guilty parties no less!) refer to the "first tranche" of the bailout, as if a French word prettifies the robbery.
One might say, "We are in the tranches encountering a tranche da vie avec la tranche l'oeil." Somesing like zat.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Today has been a banner day: solid work prospects and a Washington Post Style Invitational three-peat : Report From Week 749 in which we ask...
-
It's not year's end, but we're nearly halfway there. Here's my running list of books read so far this year, in the order of ...
-
We know society exhibits moral outrage over serial killings, as well it should. But why the widespread apathy over the death throes of the s...
1 comment:
Tranche, eh? Well, I guess that's as good a word as any.
If only someone could snap his (or her) fingers and bring us out of it....
Post a Comment