The words "are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons, and presently sent spinning, lovely, iridescent, and meaningless into the wild, blue heaven of prose." #QotD

"The result is...a very special vocabulary in which words come to transcend their exact and customary meanings -- in which, in a sense, they are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons, and presently sent spinning, lovely, iridescent, and meaningless into the wild, blue heaven of...prose."

 ~ Wolcott Gibbs, quoted in Strunk and White's Elements of Style  on the pretentious vocabularies used in courtrooms, boardrooms, government reports and spin -- nonsense words and phrases like "step change," "deep dive," "trickle-down," "learnings," and now "recalibration."
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