WTF is a phablet? When stupid words attack

Yes. I do know that a “phablet” is a frankensteined hybrid of a phone and a tablet, but I am assuming whoever came up with that name had obviously taken a handful of them.

A stupid word, and they are everywhere — I was reading about a “wriblet” today — with the advent of wearable technology, a wrist-bound tablet will become a thing — Dick Tracy style.
That name definitely puts the dick in it.

Try wearing that on your wrist, geekboy

It is not just new technology that was on the receiving end of clunky nomenclature, take shoelaces — that metal bit on the end is called an “aglet”. You’re welcome.

An affliction. Stupid words are like a rather nasty rash — they are spreading and are extremely painful — one can only hope they’ll scab over and drop off. Here a few off the top of my head: “cronut”, “crowdsourced”, “bromance”, “thought leader” and anything with the prefix “man” i.e. “manscaping”, “mancave”, “manorexia” and “manflu”. Stupid.

Social media has a hell of a lot to answer for. I’m an avid 140 character writer on Twitter (@randomswill), but can’t bring myself to use the word “tweet”. I may have inadvertently used “twitterverse”, but never again. I can guarantee I have never travelled to the dark edges of the “twittersphere”.

“Selfie” is also a very stupid word — I always assumed it had something to do with masturbation, which in a sense it is. Sadly, you can’t escape the scourge of the selfie, it was even a political tool much loved by a not so much-loved former Australian prime minister — see previous sentence.

©Steve Williams 2014