I remember hearing this from a personnel manager: "You've been deselected." Hold on, doesn't that suggest I'd already been selected? But to adorshki's point, it sounds nicer than "Sorry but we've chosen another candidate for the job."
I think Orwell might have been the first to characterize this disturbing trend when he described
"Newspeak" in
1984:
"Newspeak is a controlled language, of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that ideologically threatens the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who thus criminalized such concepts as thoughtcrime, contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy.[2][3][4] ".
I trace the current misuse of the prefix "de" to the mid '60's, anybody remember the term "de-escalation"?
Newspeak for politicians seeking to legitimize their agendas by use of dissociative terms to blunt the naked emotional shock of the subject the term was being applied to.
The birth of "politically correct" speech.
So now this kind of language is used as some kind of faux intellectual legitimizer.
In terms of simple everyday usage, I also get weary of hearing old clichés mangled in the name of "more colorful speech":
"Honing in".
No, the term is "
HOMING in".
To
hone is to sharpen and that's not the original meaning of the term "home in".
And the confusion of the terms "suspect" and "perpetrator" in reference to an apprehended criminal suspect who is not as yet proven guilty of any crime.
Guilty. At least I didn't say "nuculear"
:glee:
Just remember there's no "I" in Jaguar, either.
:glee: