{"id":10039,"date":"2010-10-03T20:38:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T00:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=10039"},"modified":"2010-10-03T20:38:02","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T00:38:02","slug":"irritating-word-of-the-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/irritating-word-of-the-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Irritating word of the month"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the winner is \u201crhetoric\u201d.<\/p>\n

Why? Because its primary meaning according to the Oxford Dictionary is:<\/p>\n

n. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A special usage is as follows:<\/p>\n

<SPECIAL USAGE> language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content: all we have from the opposition is empty rhetoric.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

I defy anyone to find a recent example where it is used to mean \u201ceffective or persuasive speaking or writing.\u201d<\/em> Instead, we find it relentlessly and tiresomely overused in its secondary meaning when the speaker or writer has no intention of addressing what was actually contained in the \u201crhetoric\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the winner is \u201crhetoric\u201d. Why? Because its primary meaning according to the Oxford Dictionary is: n. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. A special usage … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[1355,2287],"class_list":["post-10039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-rhetoric","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}