I worry that our society is
suffering from a vast case of disconnectosis. That's when you use words that
are disconnected from common sense.
Like in one of those emails I got from
a car dealer the other day. Periodically they send out reminders that it's time
to come in and buy a car. I'm okay with that, they don't overload my email
inbox with constant suggestions for buying stuff I just bought because their
algorithm told them too. But the offer they offered me was a little odd. The
subject line said, "Top Pre-Owned Deals of the Month."
Naturally I wondered. How does one
pre-own a deal?
It was classic example of a word
having an original meaning and being modified. A car being a pre-owned vehicle,
using pre-owned as an adjective, and now it's called a "pre-owned" as
a noun. When they use that modification in a different context it makes it
sound like a nonsensical adjective. A pre-owned deal.
Likewise the new term I heard,
"teaser-trailer." The studios and media are calling them that now.
Which is okay in one sense, I've complained for years that calling a film
preview
a "trailer" made no sense. It really is a teaser.
But calling it a teaser-trailer now
seems repetitive. Unless it's a subset of the whole film genre. You have your
film, and you have your trailer (which is actually a preview), and you have
your teaser-trailer, which is actually a teaser of the real trailer they'll put
out before they put out the actual film.
I think I'll just wait for the DVD.
Hey. Maybe I can connect up to a
deal on a pre-owned DVD. One with all those special features, like the formerly
distributed teaser-trailers.
Formerly distributed
teaser-trailers. Are they called pre-runs?
America, ya gotta love it.
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