Sunday, May 17, 2009

Interesting

I got in a nice little debate over dinner last night about this word. IMHO, it's one of the worst adjectives you can use to characterize a thought or feeling. It's completely dependent on the user and receiver's personal definition of the word and gives little information about an opinion. For example, if I call a wine "interesting" and don't qualify it, I think it's a copout. Thoughts?

5 comments:

  1. agree. copout. must be qualified.

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  2. "worst" depends on context. As a word "interesting" just means that the modified holds more interest than the common. Not that descriptive, I agree.

    However, "interesting" can be the greatest spoken word in terms of subtle tonal inflections carrying the meaning for the word.

    Basically, the word "interesting" modifies expression the same way alcohol modifies - the direction and degree depends on the person and the context.

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  3. one of the greatest spoken words that is not that descriptive and the direction and degree depend on the person and the context. i'll chew on that... :)

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  4. Your take on "interesting" is quite interesting. As I sat at the Wine Lab the other night enjoying a sumptuous 2005 Kenneth Crawford 4 Play Syrah the word interesting didn't come to mind. Yet now that I know it is a word that bugs you I might be inclined to use it in your presence. That in itself could be quite interesting.

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  5. Let's see if I can explain better.

    You think "interesting" is useless as it REQUIRES person and context to give it meaning.

    I think "interesting" is rich in usefulness because of the necessity of the person and context giving it meaning.

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