Don’t you just hate that word?
Brilliant.
Well, not the word, so much as its constant misuse in the media. These days everything sounds like it’s a sketch from The Fast Show.
Brilliant!
Now I know I’m not completely immune from using the word, but more often than not, I’m using it ever so slightly sarcastically.
What I’m really talking about are those hideous straplines on the front of magazines. Today’s Observer magazine is a case in point: “Introducing Dan Pearson’s Brilliant New Gardening Column.”
In what way, precisely, is it “brilliant”?
Well it’s not shining brightly, so that’s one definition we can reject.
Does it show unusual and impressive intellectual acuteness? Well, it’s a gardening column. I’m sure it’s very good as gardening columns go. But from a brief glance, I can’t see anything that’s going to go down in history.
It’s not sharp and clear in tone. Well written – probably. Nicely printed – certainly.
So it must be superb and wonderful. Well hang on just one moment. We’ve had one of these columns so far. Let us be judge of quite how marvellous this new column is.
Brilliant is just a massively overused word. And it seems to show little literary skill for the editors and sub-editors of magazines and newspapers that keep using the damn word.