Tuesday, November 17, 2009

"Awesome" ad Nawseome

A gripe.
The more you repeat a word, the less it means.
The word "awesome" is such a word.
Awesome originally meant something/someone inspiring awe (= fear/terror/spell-bindedness).
Now we use it very casually, to mean "good", "nice", "cool".
Sometimes teachers or other encouragement professionals use it to push their charges just a little bit further in their endeavours.
For me, a sad thing is that it gets (ab)used in Church these days.
Far too often!
So we end up singing (brainlessly?),
"He's so awesome,
He's so awesome,
He's so awesome in this place".
Firstly, if He is "so awesome", aren't we doing Him a disrespect by repeating this mawkish lyric to the point of mindlessness?
Secondly, "so awesome"...
I mean, words fail me!
By the way, this is the song that also features the line "I've found where I belong I'm a living stone" - Dr Livingstone, I presume??
Why not "rolling stone"?
By the way, I think I once had David Tua in my English class in O.C. back in 1990..."O for Awesome" (he's a great guy, though, and gave me an awesome blue mohawk about 3 years ago!).
Enuff!
With apologies to the songwriter who wrote the above lyrics (we are all only human after all),
Gerald.

2 comments:

  1. He actually said "O for Olsen" Filipaina, who is apparently a rugby league player and a good (awesome?) friend of David Tua. But never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, as my father says. I'm sure it's on YouTube.

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