Words that Should Get a Divorce (One in a continuing series on words whose relationships have grown tired)

for and naught

Poor naught. While its partner, for, runs around with every other word under the sun, naught can't find a single other preposition that will give it the time of day.

You'll never see from naught, to naught, with naught, or at naught. And no way will naught ever get to strike out on its own, heading up a sentence like "Naught is what you've got."

Nope, naught is hopelessly codependent.

Words That Should Get a Divorce (One in an occasional series on words whose relationships have grown tired)

short and shrift

On some level, I like the expression short shrift. But I just can't condone such unhealthy codependency. Like trove and amok, shrift is devoted to a partner that doesn't return the loyalty. On any given day, short can be seen running around all over town with everything from sell to order cook to man's disease.

This case of codependency is so bad that shrift has pretty much lost its own identity. Dictionary.com and American Heritage via dictionary.com don't give shrift an entry at all. Dictionaries that do tend to treat it as archaic and define it as: "a remission of sins pronounced by a priest in the sacrament of reconciliation," which leaves the reader wondering how this resulted in the short shrift we know today, which roughly means "careless treatment" or "scant attention."

Freedictionary.com tries to shed a little light on the matter, but doesn't fully connect the dots. In other words, shrift gets short shrift.

I say shrift needs to go out on a date with long. A long date.

Words I'm Looking Up

walk

This was going to be a "Words that Should Get a Divorce" post about "walk" and "life," as in "walk of life." I'm a little bothered by the cliche -- or, I should say, by our dependence on the cliche -- but I honestly can't think of a better alternative for "They come from every walk of life."

From every realm of life? Every area of life? Every circuit of life? Every tour of life? Every peregrination of life?

See? I got nuthin'.

So, seeing as I'm clearly unqualified to depose this cliche, I figured I'd just look up its use of "walk" in Dictionary.com.

walk. n.
27. a department or branch of activity, or a particular line of work. They found every walk of life closed against them.

Maybe my dislike of this expression is a regional prejudice. After all, I'm in L.A. And nobody walks in L.A.