On the way to work this morning, I heard an advertisement for unlimited apps. For a moment, I thought it was for a new pricing scheme on the Apple store, or similar, but then they started talking about buffalo wings. It took me a moment to make the shift. And that confused me even more. And got me thinking, when did we start shaving the English language to the point that a commercial about appetizers has me thinking about software.

Once upon a time, there was a little code of software called an applet. Usually prefaced with Java, as in Java Applet. This was code that was downloaded from the server to a client, the first step along the way to the browser based world of today. You could argue that today's app comes from. You could also argue that it comes from an abbreviation of application. Which makes some limited sense, because they are small applications.

But when did we start shaving words that did no need to be truncated and make no sense to be truncated. My least favorite is convo, short for conversation. When did the word conversation get to be so bothersome that we needed to shorten it? Similarly with appetizer, being truncated to app. In Politics and the English language, George Orwell comments on how powerful words are, and not only that but how badly, for political reasons, words are warped and changed to no longer mean what they did, but what the body politic wants them to mean. A perfect modern example is pro-life. This does not mean the individual is actually in favor of life, just opposed to abortion. Most who claim to be pro-life also support the death penalty and, in the United States, the Second Amendment, both of which are completely in opposition to life.

Why would we shave the language this way? Why would we let ad agencies, and others get away with this sort of thing? Why? Because we are too lazy to prevent it from happening. I for one am not going to let it happen.