Words Behaving Badly

It should come as no surprise that I have concerns about certain words. I mean, sure, some words are fine. They’re dependable little workhorses of language. “Chair.” “Toast.” “Tuesday.” They show up, do their job, and leave. No fuss. No attention-seeking. And then there are words that feel like they were created during a beef with humanity and the rest of us are just stuck dealing with the fallout. Take “parsimonious.” A word meaning frugal should not be that extravagant. It’s not tight-fisted. It’s verbose-fisted. And somehow, “verbose” is shorter than “parsimonious,” which feels like a serious design flaw. A genuinely frugal word would be small. Efficient. Economical with letters. That feels like a reasonable expectation. But “parsimonious” keeps going. Every time you think it’s finished, another syllable appears from around the corner carrying luggage. And then there’s “pulchritude.” Allegedly a word meaning beauty. Absolutely not. That is not the sound beauty makes. Beauty sounds…