Slimish Pickin's ...

... describes the state of our pastures this time of year.

In addition to loving photography, I love words.  As some of you may know, I earn some retirement income by working as a proofreader for five court reporters.  I was a court reporter myself for over two decades and had a previous career as a journalist so I've always been fascinated by words.  Now mind you, just because I'm a proofreader doesn't mean I'm perfect.  It's of course much easier to spot someone else's mistakes than it is your own, so give me a little leeway please.  But back to the love of words, which is where these thoughts started.

I'm always amazed at what I run across while reading deposition transcripts.  Fifty percent of the amazement comes from silly mistakes that the court reporters make and the other fifty percent comes out of the mouths of attorneys or witnesses. 

Any of us who are intrigued and pay attention to words no doubt have noticed the outlandish use of the suffix "ish" in recent times. In fact, it has become so overwhelming as to be ridiculousish.


So I decided to go to Google and seeish what the Web has to say about this newish jargon I keep hearing. On a wordish forum, I found this thought: The suffix "-ish" is increasingly popular in the speech of today's youth and can pretty much be tacked on at the end of any word.

Some crazyish examples I've encountered in the recent past include rearish, seatish, and meadowish, but todayish what I saw really tookish the cake: "It was sometime in 1997 maybeish."