- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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SMART TALK by Dr. Weiss N. Heimer
COMMINGLE: I can't see why a single M wouldn't do the job, but I love to hate this word. My Institute for the Linguistically Impaired patients who use this usually suffer from coconspirator as well.
But some of my more alert patients refer me to a certain dictionary that deserves to go unnamed, and unsold, which compounds the redundancy with a redundant definition: "to mix together." The editors may be having a little joke, but "a little bit pregnant" used to be a joke, too. The gullible just don't get it.
We love to be redundant about combining people, ingredients, or anything else. Maybe we're insecure? When I expound upon this theory, our Institute psychologist, Dr. Viva Palaver, really gets on my case, so I'll skip to some examples: intermix, interlink, intermingle, interrelate, interweave, and conjoin.
Dr. Parley Speake, referring to linguistically impaired people's belief that longer words sound better because they're longer, has a label for this condition that fits: polysyllabificationitis.
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