Talk is cheap—or is it Miserly?

Fiat Talk-Talk

Words are cheap.

To be sure, it wasn’t always that way—In the beginning was the Word, ya heard? But anyway, it sure seems that words are cheap right now.

Particularly since the advent of the printing press, each generation experiences an inflation in the lexical economy, given all the new gibberish not backed by any infusion of real gold … significance.

I had to promptly drop the economics metaphor for want of any substantive knowledge in the domain of finance or regarding the concept of inflation specifically. Sorry I brought it up. I just wanted to sound smart and fancy.

Alas, I am neither smart nor fancy… however, I tell you what, a meaningful concatenation of associated and multisyllabic words always assists in the obfuscation of the veracity of that last avowal.

Nothing beats a solidly prevaricating circumlocution. Or a gratuitously circuitous beating-around of a bush. The superfluous subterfuge that comes of such behaviors is oh so much sweeter, though, when its underhandedness is spurious anyway; after all, I’m trying to elucidate some additions to your idiom. I’m on your side, you see!

Anyway, these days, with the internet and all, the fountain of new slang is so prolific that even the nascent subfield of “Crowdsourcing and Data-Mining Social Science” can’t keep up with the daily amassing dialectical exchanges in the Tweetscape (Is a census.gov powerpoint official enough evidence for ya?). Now I could have started that last sentence by saying “Anyway, these days, with TikTok and all,” but then, you see, this blog post would appear anachronistic even sooner than it necessarily will already, referring to itself as a “blog post” and all.

Good luck with that last sentence.

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Enter Testynonyms™ – a KYBOriginal

Words are cheap, indeed.

Or, perhaps, they’re just generally pecuniary in nature. Either way, it helps to learn novel verbiage in abundantly rich associative clouds nestled with nuance betwixt each of their constituent denizens —oh, and plenty of cheap definitions lying around.

At KYBO, we’re just as thankful as you are that the SAT dropped its dedicated vocabulary section. That doesn’t mean, however, that we’re not going to try to peddle our pedagogically purposeful productions to you, dear reader.

Don’t worry, we don’t want any of your filthy lucre in exchange for these packages of paraphrasings. We just want your dedicated readership—and eventually your listenership, as we soon begin to dabble in the dark arts of … podcasting.

OH NO! It’s the dreaded monster of modernity, the enemy of checkbook-balancing octogenarians everywhere: techno-jargon. More on the KYBOcast later, but for now, let’s get back to our cheap conversation.

Wait, “our cheap conversation,” eh? Well that didn’t sound right, did it? I guess I meant to say, “let’s get back to our conversation about cheapness.” Let me try all that again…

We’ll talk more on KYBO podcasting later, but for now, let’s get back to our inchoate rumination on the concept of the manifold ways in which a thing, or an idea—or an execution of a move, perhaps—can be described as being “cheap,” either literally (that is, denotatively) or figuratively (that is, connotatively).

That last sentence contained a cheap move… I’m sorry for that, but, then again—you’re welcome.

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As promised, your free excerpt from Testynonyms™ – a KYBOriginal is appended below.

Generous vs. Cheap

Abundant/Rich vs. Scarce/Poor

Glossary

1. lexical
2. for want of
3. substantive
4. concatenation
5. obfuscation
6. veracity
7. avowal
8. prevaricating
9. circumlocution
10. gratuitously
11. circuitous
12. superfluous
13. subterfuge
14. underhandedness
15. spurious
16. elucidate
17. idiom
18. prolific
19. nascent
20. amassing
21. anachronistic
22. pecuniary
23. nuance
24. constituent
25. denizens
26. peddle
27. pedagogical
28. lucre
29. podcasting
30. octogenarians
31. jargon
32. inchoate
33. rumination
34. manifold

Would you like to expand your lexicon further?
Head over to this blog post! If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who may find this information useful as well.