For most it’s the same song and dance each year, we chat a big game to our friends and family about some elaborate New Year’s Resolution that usually consists of going to the gym more or giving up chocolate for eternity. This is usually kept as a noble sentiment for a maximum of two weeks before, low and behold, by January the 14th both the gyms and the chocolate shelves are once again empty, rendering the entire notion of making a New Year’s Resolution pointless. It happens year on year and for the most part we seem unable to learn our lesson.
[New Year’s Resolutions] happen year on year and for the most part we seem unable to learn our lesson.
However, a week before the 1st of January my housemate announced in our group chat that she had decided for 2024 to give up the word ‘slay’ from her vocabulary. Now, for as long as we have known this person, she has slipped the word at the end of every positive sentence she found. For context, everyone in our house views this word as the metonymy of everything wrong with western society in the 21st century. We tried to ban the word entirely from the house, but to no avail.
This idea got me thinking, whilst I am all for free speech, we all have certain words or swears in our vocabulary that dampen our whit and overemphasise one’s inferior intellect. I, for example, am guilty of saying the word ‘like’ about twelve times in a sentence which can make me sound like a 12-year-old still learning how to put sentences together (still learning really), and despite attempts to refrain from using it I have been unable to expel the dreaded ‘L’ word.
To her credit, it’s six weeks into 2024 and my housemate has kept her resolution far longer than most other attempts (at least that’s what she says). So, let’s think about any words that we perhaps overuse, and try to replace them with something else, that way we can see better conversation for all in 2024.
