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It's only hot if it makes your temperature rise

Oct 09, 2008 - 04:30 AM

I think it's time for the word hot to go away. If I hear of one more person, vehicle or article of clothing described as hot I am going to pull my own head off. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's my slavish devotion to the beauty and breadth of the English language, maybe it's because no one has ever referred to me as hot, but if I never hear the word hot again, outside of an equatorial country, it'll be too soon.

"She is so hot."

"He is so hot."

"Those pants are so hot on you."

This last one I could buy, if the person was clad in, say, corduroy trousers. Corduroy trousers are hot. I've worn them. Their ability to retain body heat was the reason I wore them. If I happened to look darn smart in them, well that was a bonus. But having some idiot blurting that I looked hot in them would've received a look of dull surprise. Of course I look hot. I'm wearing corduroy pants.

What is worse, many of these language-slaughtering dopes throw further gasoline on the linguistic fire by adding the superlative, "Oh My God!" Although in the idiot vernacular this is pronounced as the run-together "OmmaGawwwwd." The I.Q. of the speaker generally shrinks in inverse proportion to the length of the last syllable.

"OmmaGawwwwd! Those sandals are so hot!" Don't even get me started on the irony of hot sandals.

If the speaker is really enthused they will throw in the ubiquitous totally. Thus creating the metaphysical conundrum of how a vehicle parked at Portage and Main in February can still be totally hot.

What really baffles is the "Ommagawwwd," the constant referral to a supreme deity in matters of "hot-ness." I've combed the Old and New Testaments, Koran, Torah and even the Vedas and nowhere do I find anything close to, "Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said OmmaGawwwd. She is soooo hot."

Nowhere.

Even in the innumerable passages of "begatting" where one might expect to find a hottie or two the word is absent. We have Hittites up the wahzoo, but no hotties. Nor in the early pages of Genesis, where there was a great deal of physical exertion, is there anything remotely like "On the seventh day the Lord rested . . . because he was hot."

I suppose a big part of my issue is that it's just laziness. A product of that uniquely human trait of reaching for the quickest and easiest at hand. This kind of language usage is akin to a painter who uses only blues and reds. Instead of hot, why not gorgeous, intoxicating or remarkable. It may lack poetry, but, "That top you are wearing certainly makes me want to have a great deal of sex with you," at least has clarity and honesty.

Still, I'm not above succumbing to this linguistic loafing occasionally myself. As a teen, gadding about in my hot corduroy pants, I'm sure I ruffled a few adult feathers with my quick and easy use or misuse of the word cool.

"Cool flares."

"Cool platforms."

"She is so cool."

Interesting that what was once cool has now become hot. Maybe that generation gap isn't as wide I thought. Ommagawwwd, that is like, so totally weird.


Durham resident Neil Crone, actor-comic-writer, saves some of his best lines for his columns. He is currently starring in the hit sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie.

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