ON BEING A SNOB
I am not a snob. Nor do I play one on TV. I will admit though, that I have known many in my life and even called them friends at times. I graduated from college with snobs, played golf with snobs and certainly had several experiences with business associates who, for whatever purpose, had their head so far up their ass . . . . . . no, I won't go there.
So here is my pet peeve when it comes to my friends, the snobs. They seem to have a problem with the use of proper English. If anyone should keep up appearances by using "The King's English" with befitting aplomb, seems to me it would be snobs. I'll keep this brief with only two examples. However, both of these examples may surprise you. Especially if you are not a snob and simply want to continue reading to find out how you might catch your next snob in an English usage faux pas.
Beginning with my college buddies. It is ironic to me to listen to a person with a PhD announce that they graduated college in 1972. A person simply cannot "graduate college". Graduate is NOT a verb. One can graduate from college. But if the snob says "I graduated college", that person is implying that they did something to the college. I did many things to my college during my tenure there. However, I did not graduate college.
Most of the snobs I've known through life were golfers. I played golf for nearly 5 decades and never really mastered the game. But one thing I did not do is "Golf". Once again, golf is not a verb. It is a noun. You can play golf, hate golf, watch golf and suck at golf, but you cannot "golf". No one baseballs or have you ever seen a person tennis? I don't think so.
English was always my best subject in school and I loved writing things down to express thoughts or just piss people off. But, even when I write notes to myself, I try to punctuate and spell things correctly. That's why I tend to snicker inside when I hear one of my friends, the snob, sound more like the kid from the wrong side of the tracks when expressing their latest snobby ventures. And yet, I have no problem justifying that snicker. Because as you now know, I am not a snob.
4 comments:
Slang can be useful at times, especially swear words.
i need to learn some spanish cuss words,,,im a t a loss here when i get mad,,have to revert to ingles,,,,,i was however once callled ''pendejo'' in a traffic dispute,,,,,guess i better look that one up. rather sure it was not a compliment???
Chuck, when you were a kid in Elkhart, you should have been a snob since you had a department store with you name on it. But actually you were a pretty nice guy.
haha your blog is epic
Post a Comment