Words Are Playthings...For Some...A Flesh Eating Plague for Others

I'm a lover of the English language. I love every aspect of our fair language. So, it's not as sexy as Italian, or French, or as guttural as German. I love it. That is why I'm a journalist. I also enjoy public speaking. Notice I didn't say that I "love" public speaking. It isn't at the top of my 'favorite-things-list' but it's pretty close.
In my line of work I cover stories where supposedly important people speak to the public or just large groups of people within their sections or whatnot and I'm constantly amazed at the words or the cliches they try to use. Beautiful example; a guy that was talking to a group of people repeated that he takes a certain aspect of their job very seriously and when monthly and annual inspections come around he's really going to be a stickler. As a segway into his next topic and to refer to the fact that he had been repeating himself and wasting our time he said "I'm going to start sounding like a tape recorder." I kid you not. A tape recorder? Are you kidding? The sad thing is he wasn't. Another thing that rattles my cage is when people use the wrong word or a more 'intelligent' sounding word to sound well, more intelligent. The biggest, most misused word in all of the universe is UTILIZE. For crying out loud just say USE. You need to UTILIZE the suggestion box to make your company a better place to work. How about saying "You need to use the suggestion box to make your company a better place to work." What is so hard about that? Aquire is another good one. 'Bob AQUIRED an award.' Or 'Bob GOT and award.'
Seriously, If you want to use good words then learn some. The dictionary is just like any other book. You can just read it for no other reason than to learn some new words. Or a thesaurus, another classic read. In fact if you were to go into a thesaurus and look up a word that you use all the time, I guarantee you'll find better, more descriptive words that don't make you sound like a dolt. So until next time aquire a dictionary or thesaurus and matriculate some fresh words to utilize and astound your colleagues....BADOW!