Inhuman or Inhumane?

The news is filled with the use of these terms, and sometimes they are mis-used. Honestly, would you rather be “inhuman” or “inhumane”?

Inhuman is more dastardly than inhumane. One who is “inhuman” is cruel beyond the scope of being a human being. Whacking a mole over the head several times to kill it would be considered inhuman behavior.

If you are “inhumane”, you are being accused of being unsympathetic, lacking the ability to be compassionate or kind (much like many human beings). Telling a mole’s offspring that you just whacked their parent would be inhumane.

See the difference? Now stop whacking that poor mole!

“Adult Child” is an Oxymoron

No, I’m not dissing my “grownup children” (another oxymoron); I’m ranting about the lack of an appropriate word. The English language apparently has no word to designate an offspring who has become an adult. Can anyone… anyone… PU-LEEZE… come up with a good word?

Children do grow up (at least in height and age). They don’t remain children forever. I personally dislike the word kid, which my mother eschewed as meaning “goat child”. At least kid is better than the alternatives. Words like progeny, heir, descendant sound a bit pretentious with over-expectations.

My suggestions (and certainly you can do better):

kidoffspring  (kid and offspring)
kideir (kid and heir, get it?)
grownperson (lacks the family connection)
young adult child (kinda long and reflects the “child” thing)
growki (grown kid, but it’s closer)
*pretendependent (tongue-in-cheek “pretend independent” for 18-plus-kids who return home)
*chult (this one comes closest, marrying “child” and “adult”)

*these last two came from the online Urban Dictionary.

Myriad Questions or a Myriad of Questions

How do you use the word “myriad”? As a noun or an adjective? The snobby grammarian purists (and poets) insist on using it as an adjective; as in: They ask myriad questions. or Myriad participants attended the conference.

Then there are the pure grammarians — my kind of anarchy grammarians who use language to suit them. They readily accept: They ask a myriad of questions. or A myriad of participants attended the conference.

What’s right? you ask, forgetting that we anarchists do not recognize the words right and wrong. Here’s another opportunity to make your choice the prime factor. Which do you like best?  Until the 1800s, myriad was used in English as a noun. Then along came a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Now you can blame the confusion on Coleridge and his “Hymn to the Earth,” in which he included the lines:

O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention:
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teem’d forth from the mighty embracement.

 So now it’s up to you. Both uses are acceptable. But you wouldn’t stoop to playing the snooty card… would you? Or do thou strovest to flee?