Words To Kill For

Words To Kill For — And Get Away With It

emes are relentless. In ways most mysterious, they propagate indiscriminately whatever they can manage to assimilate whether culturally enriching or withering. Pop or trendy alterations of the forms and nuance of perfectly respectable English words, written and spoken, are especially susceptible to memetic propagation, and as a consequence those once perfectly respectable words can no longer be used freely by the respectable, or if risked being used, can be done so only with the greatest care taken to ensure they’re understood in their pre-altered form and sense.

Following, we present a Top Ten List of such words which when written or uttered are cause sufficient for the murder of the writer or utterer, and the immediate establishment of a prima facie case of justifiable homicide with the consequent full exoneration of the murderer. We present these words as a Top Ten List merely for reasons of economy, and convenient and familiar unit of presentation, not because there are but ten candidates deserving of listing. Feel free to add to this list candidates of your own choosing as the spirit may move you.

Now, without further prelude, we give you our

Top Ten List of Words To Kill For

#10: Input (as in, We would value your input on our new chemical process.)
#9: Process (as in, Learning process; Grieving process; Peace process.)
#8: Scripted (as in, He scripted last year’s three highest-grossing box office hits whose profits were of awesome proportions.)
#7: Awesome (as in, Leonard DiCaprio is one awesome dude!)
#6: Grow (as in, He needs more capital in order to grow his business.)
#5: Needs (as in, He needs to be less judgmental in his dealings with others.)
#4: Partner (as in, His company partnered with its archenemy as it made the transition from a private to a public company.)
#3: Transition (as in, We’re transitioning to a paperless office as part of our restructuring.)
#2: Closure (as in, The slow and horrible death of the drunk-driver who killed our dog gave us closure.)

For the #1 entry in our list, we have an anomaly: not one word, but six, each harmless, unobjectionable and innocent in itself, but when strung together not only cause sufficient for murder of the stringer-togetherer, and exoneration of the murderer on grounds of justifiable homicide, but cause for hailing said murderer as a Genuine Hero, and someone fully worthy of our utmost admiration and respect.

And now, our

#1: At the end of the day (as in, At the end of the day our view of the matter will prevail.)

That is all — and for a single sitting, quite enough.