I am very concerned about our mother tongue. I fear that the tongue has developed a 
flesh eating disease and part of it is slowly falling off. I am concerned that we are losing pieces of our language on a regular basis and unless we do somethig to stem this tide, we are going to wind up saying goodbye to some our our favorite words. Just like the Pilgrims lost “thee”, “thou” and “pillory”, we are in danger of having some of our words hauled off to the literary dirt pile due to lack of use. Allow me to cite some examples.
PUTTERING – Puttering is a lost art and soon to become a lost word. When one putters, one keeps himself busy doing a string of minor tasks that aren’t very important. It is similar to actually being on the floor of Congress.
But even though puttering is a nice word and fun to say, we are losing it because nobody putters anymore. They “hang out”, “chill”, or “veg” but nobody putters. Pity.
The same can be said for TINKERING. Tinkering and puttering are essentially the same thing although tinkering employs the use of tools of some sort. A hammer, a screw driver and a roll of duct tape are the usual tinkering tools, but since nobody tinkers any more it makes no difference.
Now, let me ask you this? When was the last time you were TARDY? Depending on your age, the answer might be never, because you’ve never heard the word “tardy”. To be tardy means to be late. When I was in school, tardiness was a recorded statistic in your permanent record. Even your report card showed the number of days you missed school due to illness, and the number of times you were tardy due to you getting up too late. But alas, no one is tardy any more. They are “late”, “fashionably late”, or “tied up in traffic.”
DANDY and PEACHY are also about to enter the lexicon of forgotten words. I love these words as descriptors of my mien. When somebody asks me how I am, or how my day is going, I respond with either DANDY, or PEACHY. I don’t want to be “just fine” or “good” as most people answer, I want a descriptive word to project my disposition.
The real upside to using woods like peachy and dandy is that when you use them in response to a question from a 20-year-old clerk at the hardware store you get the funniest expressions.
Finally, I want to restore the words FETCHING and COMELY to their rightful status in the English language. These words were once used to describe a very pretty girl but now these these lovely descriptions have been replaced with “hot”. How banal and unpoetic.
So I urge you, if you love the English language, go out into the world and do your best to keep our vocabulary from vanishing. Get a thesaurus and use it daily, or quotidian or diurnal; it’s up to you, but exercise your right to free speech and exercise our language by using more words.
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