Grammar Rocks

Adjectives, adverbs, interjections in wartime

“More importantly, he is destroying the country.”

Is it “More important,” or “More importantly”? Everyone misuses that second phrase, even academics on television.

Important is an adjective. Importantly is an adverb.

“[What is] more important [adjective, more precisely a predicate adjective modifying the implied subject What], he is destroying the country, for while he speaks importantly [adverb modifying the verb speaks] into the camera, he’s little more than a dick.”

Americans live in a country where people in control of our media time are often clueless about their own uses and abuses of the English language.

“I’m seriously.”

No, you are serious. Serious is a predicate adjective, modifying the subject, a noun or pronoun. Seriously is an adverb, which modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb.

“I’m serious when I say you are seriously batshit.” See, batshit is an adjective here, and the adverb seriously modifies it.

“This is unbelievably.”

No, this is unbelievable.

I don’t know how this misuse started—but I remember saying something like that years ago, “I’m seriously…” and it was merely an incomplete thought, and perhaps that’s what’s happened to a lot of us. Our brains get overwhelmed with impulses or something. But we need to stop it. Finish the thought. Use the adjectives, use the adverbs. Let them do what they do. To wit:

I’m unbelievably serious that our fucking president is fucking batshit.

Fun Fact: “fuck” is the perfect English word. You can use it as every part of speech.

Let’s practice: There was a fucker [noun] of a clip of DJT today doing at the microphone what can only be described as joyously reenacting a rape, er, sorry, mocking the idea of a transgender weightlifter. He appeared to come into the mic at one point. It’s beyond fucking [adjective] disturbing. Republicans in the audience chuckled, knowingly, the fuckers [plural noun]. Who among us hasn’t used a public speaking moment to masturbate and bully simultaneously before the crowd? That no one—literally no one—can say FUCK NO [interjection] to this fucking [adjective] pornographic cretin is beyond all understanding!!!! Fuck [verb] us.

This seems like the right moment to talk about interjections. Remember that Schoolhouse Rock song? “Interjections show excitement, and emotion,…” “Ouch!” “Hey!” Like Batman, “Pow!” “Biff!” Can I get a “Zowee!”

So many ways to express emotion. And yet, as a longtime watcher of HGTV and a fan of the “reveal” in the last (measly) five minutes of any series episode, I’m at a point in my dotage where if I hear this one reaction one more fucking time, I will break a face:

“Oh my gosh!” OH. MY. GOSH.

MY. GOSH.

A few years ago, HGTV allowed someone to break the “Oh my god!” barrier, but it’s hardly a variation.

Then there’s…

“Amazing.”

“Unbelievable.”

Americans, are there really no other interjections, no other adjectives, no words in your well from which you can draw to express a moment of deep emotion other than, “Oh my gosh” and “Amazing”? This is splendid? Sure, you could say, “Holy fucking shit,” but “bleep, bleep, bleep” might not be ideal on television.

Of course, there’s the ubiquitous, “Cool.” I’ve used this word, personally, since at least 1972, and it works.

And to be fair, people also like to use the baseball idioms, “You knocked it out of the park” and “You hit it out of the park,” but those expressions, too, are not only overused but also often misspoken as, “You took this one out of the park.” Like a pinecone?

This brings me to misused idioms. Baseball legend Yogi Berra was credited with misspeaking all the time, as in “You gotta grab a bull by the teeth.” He also had a special way with expressions that sound okay till you really look at the words.

• A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.

• Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.

• I usually take a two-hour nap, from one o’clock to four.

• It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

• It gets late early out here.

• It’s so crowded nobody goes there anymore.

• It’s deja vu all over again.

• I never said half the things I said.

Sportscasters agonize me, or do I mean antagonize me, putting me through agony, during bowl games—speaking when they have no idea what the idiom means. I hear so many egregious misuses of language, for all intensive purposes (no, it’s INTENTS and purposes), I know I need to let it go, chill out. I know you could care less (no, couldn’t care less). A couple from the holiday bowl games this past December:

• “The pressure is overbearing for these players!” No, it’s overwhelming.

• “That coach really resignates with the crowd!” No, it really resonates.

MGM producer Samuel Goldwyn was famous for a misunderstanding of language that was delightful: “Anyone who sees a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.” Still, language shouldn’t be used only for our inadvertent amusement, but instead for communication. Nowadays, though, you can just stand in front of a mic with a flag backdrop and groan and call it presidential, so what am I on about?

So to close tonight’s rant, as we head into war with Greenland, war with Mexico, war with the EU, war with South America, war war war all the time, so that our children (or as Pete Hegseth calls them, “resources”) can have no future, I point out for your edification that the English language is entirely too rife with expressions derived from guns.

• Bullet points

• Rapid-fire dialogue

• Straight from the shoulder

• Shoot from the hip

• Under the gun

• Don’t shoot the messenger

• Gun shy

• Give it to ’em with both barrels

• A smoking gun

• Guns blazing

• Going great guns

• Don’t hold a gun to my head

• Stick to your guns

• Jump the gun

• Son of a gun

• Packing heat

• Big shot

Do you feel that we are living in fucking hell? I do. Scream that into the voicemails of your congresspeople: 202-225-3121.

Meanwhile, we better not go out with a bang, but a whimper is no better.

Sending love, motherfuckers,

Miss O’