Jill Shargaa: Why Put ‘Awe’ in Awesome

“Awesome” How often do you use it? Let me admit it… I don’t use “awesome” as earlier. Talking about my college days, I would say “awesome” every now and then, mostly influenced by the crowd and the word felt totally “cool”, “in style” to be precise. I came across this awesome video and couldn’t stop laughing at my usages of “awesome.” Too many awesome s for now…. Watch this TED video to feel awesome :)

Jill Shargaa:

Jill Shargaa is a comedian who founded the all-female comedy revue ‘Evening of Estrogen.’Also the founder of Shargaa Illustration and Design, and has done work for Universal Studios Creative Resources and Walt Disney Imagineering.

I have a friend. Whenever we meet and talk I get slightly irritated. I ask him “How are you, life, job, parents, gf,…….?” His response would start with awesome. I don’t have a problem if it starts with awesome. He makes me enter the ‘irritation zone’ because the things which starts with awesome, stops there. And the irritated me mutters ” What an awesome life!”  It’s not because of the word, it’s because the beauty of conversation is destroyed.

We all have our favourite words, if not favourite, the unknowingly ‘most used words.’ And when we talk, we don’t realise the other person recording the no. of usages :) Using the same word over and over in a conversation isn’t a sign of good communication. And we have to admit we all have done it or do that even today.

I am not debating here on whether “Awesome” should be used frequently or not. You might say, “I find everything wonderful and hence I say awesome” I nod my head with affirmation here. It’s your way of expressing things. who am I to say? But somehow, sometimes I just can’t agree without a but… and the but here is…. If you use one word for all intensity of emotions then you would be left with no words to explain the greatest of all. Wait! That’s probably why they say “Falling short of words” Well … I remain a little confused here, but… I prefer different words for different degrees of emotions :) What about you?

Here is what C.S.Lewis has to say :

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”