overused word: busy

Words have meaning. Overused words lose their meaning. I’m going to sprinkle my blog from time to time with overused words that I notice all too often.

When I hear an overused word, I wonder to myself: have we lost the creative use of our vocabulary? Wouldn’t it be better to use other more descriptive words instead of defaulting to overused ones?

The word of the day is BUSY. In response to the question, “How have you been?” it’s easy to answer, “Busy.” Or, someone reluctantly starts a conversation with, “I know you’re busy…” Then there’s the times when we look at the calendar and say, “It’s going to be a busy week.” Include the sigh. Aside: while composing this blog post, another 187 tweets with the word “busy” got twittered.

The thing is, life is busy. That’s just part of life. We’re not in school any more; we’re thrust into the real world of adult responsibility. (I’m assuming that most blog readers here are older than high school and college age.)

I prefer to say that “I like to live an active lifestyle.” Seems redundant to say that I’m busy; overstating the obvious. Meaningless.

[photo credit: mrmole]