Basically Driving Me Mad

June 26th, 2008

Usually prefacing an involved explanation of something very technical, I would conservatively estimate that I hear the word “basically” used in a sentence a couple of hundred times a week. I also hear it used in the middle of any particular sentence, presumably to describe a simplification of what’s being said. In reality, I think it’s become just a bridging word, but its use has become overwhelming.

It wasn’t driving me quite so insane, of course, until Amy noticed, and we started pointing it out to one another. Now that the secret is out, I can’t help but suppress a slight cringe.  At first, I would smile to myself, but now I can’t even use it — or even replace it with its cousin, “essentially”– and I find my spoken sentence structure has a more tightened, perhaps even erudite, quality to it, due to the lack of vague transition phrases.

A quick Googling of the word shows that it’s a popular word in all sorts of business names, particularly ones that begin with the letter “B”: Basically Babysitting, Basically Beds, Basically Bushwalking Club, Basically Brazil…

Entry Filed under: Literature