Tuesday, February 21, 2006
'Absolutely' Ridiculous
One of the tendencies among Indians is to gratuitously use adjectives/adverbs, to express a strong emotion. 'Absolutely' is IMHO the most abused of such words.
"It's absolutely amazing" is a sentence that one hears almost daily....Interestingly, the phrase 'relatively amazing' finds very few takers....Strange that Indians find most of the incredible happenings around them to be 'absolutely incredible'...Now, C'mon...not all incredible events can rank very highly on an 'absolute' scale of incredibility. Surely, there are many events that are 'relatively' incredible , i.e their incredibility pales in contrast to events that are 'absolutely' incredible!!!
Take for instance, the event of Venkatesh Prasad scoring a century at Perth which is 'relatively incredible' as its incredibility ceases to amaze us when juxtaposed with the event of Shiv Sainiks distributing Valentine Cards.
So, I urge the readers of this Blog to use the adjective - 'absolutely' sparingly as we live in a 'relative' world wherein very few things can actually be talked about in an 'absolute' sense.
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One of the tendencies among Indians is to gratuitously use adjectives/adverbs, to express a strong emotion. 'Absolutely' is IMHO the most abused of such words.
"It's absolutely amazing" is a sentence that one hears almost daily....Interestingly, the phrase 'relatively amazing' finds very few takers....Strange that Indians find most of the incredible happenings around them to be 'absolutely incredible'...Now, C'mon...not all incredible events can rank very highly on an 'absolute' scale of incredibility. Surely, there are many events that are 'relatively' incredible , i.e their incredibility pales in contrast to events that are 'absolutely' incredible!!!
Take for instance, the event of Venkatesh Prasad scoring a century at Perth which is 'relatively incredible' as its incredibility ceases to amaze us when juxtaposed with the event of Shiv Sainiks distributing Valentine Cards.
So, I urge the readers of this Blog to use the adjective - 'absolutely' sparingly as we live in a 'relative' world wherein very few things can actually be talked about in an 'absolute' sense.
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