Autumn has arrived. For the next sev­er­al weeks the inex­orable change in the colours of the for­est that envelopes us here chal­lenges descrip­tion. A fit­ting word would be “awe­some”. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, despite at least a dozen syn­onyms, it’s a rote response to every­thing from the tru­ly awe-inspir­ing to the most pro­sa­ic, which strands it in a ver­bal wasteland.
A study a decade ago con­clud­ed that the aver­age vocab­u­lary of an adult native Eng­lish-speak­er ranges from twen­ty to thir­ty-five thou­sand words, and tends to stop grow­ing at mid­dle age.
The end of the growth peri­od of leaves is sad in that it sig­nals the end of sum­mer, but at least it is glorious.

The autumn of vocab­u­lary is more like this:
“So I mean, it would be like awe­some if we empow­ered like more words. I mean oh my god, that would like so super and impact thuh exis­ten­tial threat that’s so like tox­ic, and I like total­ly get it would be like amaz­ing and a game-chang­er.”
To appre­ci­ate the fore­go­ing sen­tence in all its appalling glo­ry, try read­ing it aloud. 
If it makes com­plete sense to you, there’s no point read­ing on.
If it makes your teeth grate, you were almost cer­tain­ly once famil­iar with a book that used to be an essen­tial on every writer’s desk. Its use was taught in high school Eng­lish class­es, along with grammar.
The Mer­ri­am Web­ster dic­tio­nary calls Roget’s The­saurus “immor­tal”. Named for its cre­ator Peter Mark Roget, an emi­nent Eng­lish physi­cian, phys­i­ol­o­gy expert, math­e­mati­cian, inven­tor, writer, edi­tor and chess whiz, it was writ­ten in 1805.
In the cur­rent mania for ban­ning books because of the use of a sin­gle word or an uncom­fort­able con­cept, it wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing if the ulti­mate ‘word tool’ is declared a dan­ger to young minds.
But take heart, there is a rough equiv­a­lent inside every com­put­er, although you’d nev­er know it from lis­ten­ing to ordi­nary speech, or from broad­cast and print news reports.

                           SYNONYMS OUGHT TO RULE

With alter­na­tives a mere mouse click away, why is “tox­ic” a near knee-jerk neg­a­tiv­i­ty adjec­tive of choice for so many jour­nal­ists, who of all peo­ple, ought to have an above aver­age lev­el of erudition?
Among the sev­en alter­na­tives that could replace the word that has achieved almost cliché sta­tus are: poi­so­nous, nox­ious, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and dead­ly. Any or all of them graph­i­cal­ly describe the over-use of tox­ic.
That said, as a one-time sub-edi­tor, I under­stand the issue of space that would man­date it in this New York Times head­line: “Why We Can’t Quit Our Tox­ic, Insa­tiable Appetite for Polls”.
Even so, the chief sub I toiled under would have not­ed that lazy lan­guage encour­ages lazy thinking.
“Amaz­ing”, anoth­er rou­tine adjec­tive (appar­ent­ly manda­to­ry when pub­licly describ­ing one’s chil­dren, spous­es and part­ners to strangers or a large audi­ence) has at least fif­teen synonyms.

Few of them apply to any­thing slight­ly out of the ordi­nary, nev­er mind fall foliage.
“Super” and “total­ly” crop up with a fre­quen­cy that belies the exis­tence of any oth­er ways of express­ing any degree of zeal, despite the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of oth­er possibilities.
Per­haps they are eschewed because none of them can “empow­er”, anoth­er term so all-encom­pass­ing it’s at risk of bor­der­ing on inanity.
“Oh my God” (or OMG for tex­ting devo­tees), the ubiq­ui­tous response to any­thing and every­thing that might require a com­ment or reply, on the oth­er hand, is a for­giv­able response to a web­site that pur­ports to teach “effec­tive Eng­lish speak­ing ethics” by claim­ing: “If you want to prac­tice Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion in unique styles and if you are search­ing for some ways to prac­tice per­fect­ly to speak con­ve­nient­ly before oth­ers, you should look below. A few amaz­ing prac­tice strate­gies are writ­ten below.”

                         A LIKE TO HATE, AND MORE

As for the ridicu­lous use of “like” as a com­ma even when punc­tu­a­tion is not nec­es­sary, I fear the only answer is to stop cring­ing (and in my case snarling epi­thets when I hear it on radio or TV) and accept that it’s prob­a­bly here to stay.
Per­sis­tent utter­ers of “impact”, which has sev­en­teen alter­na­tives as a noun and five as a verb, should be made aware that when used in lieu of ‘affect’, it cries out for ‘pos­i­tive’ or ‘neg­a­tive’ as a modifier.
As a con­ces­sion to clar­i­ty and we pedants, I pro­pose that jour­nal­ists eschew “game chang­er” in any sto­ry that is not about sports.
In the same vein, they could take note that “exis­ten­tial” has six syn­onyms, none of which come remote­ly close to the apoc­a­lyp­tic mean­ing present­ly ascribed.
By its very nature, lan­guage con­stant­ly evolves, but our abil­i­ty to clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate, present and dis­cuss alter­na­tive points of view is only as effi­cient as the ways we have to express them.
Or, as Con­fu­cius put it: “If lan­guage is not cor­rect, then what is said is not what is meant…Hence there must be no arbi­trari­ness in what is said. This mat­ters above everything.”
And that, I think, is a ster­ling exam­ple of using words in a way that match­es autumn leaves.

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