Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Superfluous Word.

At our First -Born’s recent 30th Birthday Party, one of her Bosses made a comment to me that although very, very nice, and likewise as generous and true, I considered it superfluous. So much so that I decided to write a blog about it, but then began to wonder at myself for even using the word superfluous! I mean isn’t the word “Superfluous,” superfluous anyway?
I guess I must have come across the word Superfluous through reading books long, long ago in the past, and probably knew what it meant long before I could actually properly pronounce it. (It is not pronounced “super- fluous” as I first used to pronounce it, but rather it is:” Su-per-flu-ous” and actually means:” Unnecessary or Needless comment” or “Extra – redundant, etc”.)
The thing is I have long known how to properly pronounce it and even longer, have known what it meant, but to the best of my memory, I have never ever used it before in Conversation let alone in writing. Which leads me to wonder how many others these days actually use the word “Superfluous” as against those who use the words “ Unnecessary or redundant etc?”
This led me to wonder how many other words there are used in Books and articles these days that no one ever uses in real live Conversations? How about you? Have you ever used Superfluous? And are there any other words that you know of, that would fit into this category of “known but never used in real speech?” Over to you for comment now: Walter

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