Word of the Day – Verbicide

Verbicide (n)

vurb-uh-sayd

The willful distortion or depreciation of the original meaning of a word.

Literal meaning; word murder.

Example

“C.S. Lewis on verbicide.  “Verbicide, the murder of a word, happens in many ways. Inflation is one of the commonest; those who taught us to say awfully for ‘very,’ tremendous for ‘great,’ sadism for ‘cruelty,’ and unthinkable for ‘undesirable’ were verbicides.“”