Someone Get This (Amazing) Generation a Thesaurus!

The garden tour is over and I thought we could all use a break from the whole topic of horticulture!

As a writer, maybe I'm just a tad sensitive about word-use. Perhaps I'm the only one who finds the use of "amazing" to describe just about anything these days a bit annoying bordering on maddening. When everyone and everything is amazing, they cease to be.

Nothing marks the entrance into lady-geezerdom like a rant about the "youngsters". But those whippersnappers, the ones with all the exuberance and uber-creativity when it comes to art and film and activism and music and on and on can't seem to access another adjective.

Here's a hint kids: Get out your little gadget and google dictionary.com. You don't even have to thumb through a musty-fusty old book, just hit the little yellow tab marked Thesaurus and type in "amazing". There you will find all sorts of wonderful words to describe your amazing trip to India, your amazing boyfriend, the amazing skirt you saw at Urban Outfitters, etc. I'll give you a few gratis.

For me, the word has been devalued and when I hear it employed for the umpteenth time for an "amazing band", "amazing food", "amazing book", my mind automatically inserts "probably mediocre".

It seems to be the adjective of choice for TV bachelorettes and anything but real housewives who haven't bothered to feed their brain with other more fascinating choices. This media-fed word phenomenon then hemorrhages into popular culture and before you know it the aging boomers are all over it like facebook. I'd even prefer over-indulged terms like "hot mess"; it's so much more clever and open to interpretation.

It's not the first time a word has bedeviled me. "Basically" back in the '80's wormed its way into the language as the go-to adverb for starting any conversation. It was the multi-syllabic "so", but gave an instantaneous air of authority.