Quote:
Originally posted by pretermitted_child
Ah, yes, the old using-the-wrong-word-to-sound-more-intelligent trick.
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And its cousin, the butchering-a-foreign-word-to-sound-more-cultured trick. Like people who pronounce "forte" with two syllables ("for-tay"), when the French word is pronounced simply "fort."
It divides humanity into three distinct classes. At the top, people who use the word with one syllable. Then people who use it to impress but mispronounce it, with unintentionally bourgeois results. Then, at the bottom, the people who don't know what it means anyway.
Alas, it's the people in the top class who have to suffer the odd and pitying looks, like
they're the stupid social climbers who overreached their educations.
