Hacker News Reader

He also freely admits at the end of the essay that he's sure he committed many of the sins he's preaching against. I suspect he'd also freely admit that there are reasons to use the passive voice. But I think his primary complaints, especially his egregious examples of academic and political writing, were right on the money.

View on HN

And to quote from that very essay, "Professor Hogben... while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means".

That is, "egregious" used to mean—even as recent as in Orwell's time—"blatant, obvious, unconcealed, glaring". But apparently all such words also gain a secondary shade of meaning "bad" and come to mean "baltantly, openly bad, and proud of it".

All the more reasons to use smaller, shorter words.

The trouble is not that he incidentally commits them. He simply has no idea what they are.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com