I’ll See Your “Awesome” and Raise You a “Dude!”

"Can you imagine how hard life would be if I weren’t so awesome?" This was put to me as a real question the other day.

“Define awesome,” I said.

Frankly, the word “awesome” has been used to death. Remember when cathedrals were awesome? The power and majesty of a mountain range was awesome. The inhalation-stopping, jaw-dropping, brow-smoothing grandeur of a wide-open vista was awesome.

The word “awesome” lent real scope to a descriptive sentence.

“How’s the new baby?” I asked someone.

“Awesome! He’s so awesome!”

That’s right: the baby is breathtaking, grand in scope, and mind-blowing.

To her defense, I would not have been surprised to hear her describe her grandson as “gnarly”. Language has never been her long suit. I know I’m being somewhat unfair when I inwardly laugh at how we, all of us, are helping the disintegration of the language one awesome baby boy at a time.

Forgive me, Funk and Wagnall, for I have sinned.

I sometimes get the feeling that our word-bank, as it were, is getting low on funds. What we need, people, are more words, words with meanings that will not subtract from the original connotation but will nevertheless make a contribution.

For instance, right now, I’m feeling combobulated and gruntled.

Life is good.

I would also like to be chuffed, but it seems that “chuffed” is already a word.

Silly word, chuffed. It’s always left me shaking my head a bit, the indisputable meaning of it lodged in a particularly untidy region of my head.

It means pleased, doesn’t it?

At any rate, in answer to the question put to me the other day, yes, life is hard, even when you’re “awesome”.

But it gets better once you’ve declared yourself “chuffed”.