Linguistic Rants

First, I have recently come to the conclusion that after years of food writing, I hate the word "nourish." It is a perversion and an abomination in that it is passive.

Nothing nourishes me. I eat, devour, bite, extract, digest, chew, savour, etc. My food just sits there, awaiting my fork or chopstick to carry it to my mouth where I do the business of converting it into useful components. It doesn't nourish me.

When the word is used in the context of art or education or something like that, it particularly sends me into fits of annoyance.

Good people, people who say what they mean and mean what they say, do not use "nourish." They do not nourish the body whole. They do not nourish the spirit. The word itself is even hideous, visually. I see the "nou" and I expect the "gat." But no, I get "nourish" which means that I am dealing with a speaker I will not want to spend time with who uses words that might work in some near Eastern language, but are preposterous in English.

Nourish! Indeed!