"icon" and "iconic"

Jocelyn Limpert jocelyn.limpert at GMAIL.COM
Thu Mar 24 11:39:42 UTC 2011


Must the whole writing and speaking world keep using "icon" and "iconic"?
What once were acceptable have been so overused and should be used
sparingly, if at all, because of this -- don't people have other words in
their, "like," so "awesome" vocabularies these days? People latch on to
these words and so overuse them and just don't let go. That's one of the
joys of being an editor, fixing such writing or speech, if you can get your
hands on it -- in the same way, someone I know has to remove every numerous
and unnecessary and meaningless "kind of" and "sort of" from interview
responses.

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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