Linguistic snobs united

Friday, 10 Jun 2005

Simon Batistoni:

I’ve never tried to explain this fully before. Somehow it seems a strange argument to be making, but one of the problems I have with the word “blog” is that it’s repulsive.

Find yourself a mirror. Sit down in front of it and consciously say the word “blog.” Watch your mouth as you do so. It’s a word which has to be screwed around the mouth and spat out. It’s not pretty at all.

It’s an unfortunate collision of phonemes. Thinking about words which use similar sounds, I came up with blag, slog, grog, blob, slob, glob, lob, clog, flog…

Many of them are colloquial. Almost all of them describe something unpleasant, uncouth or somehow “rough” in execution. Words aren’t just conceptual. They have aesthetics and aural qualities, and unfortunately “blog” falls in with a bad crowd.

Indeed, indeed.