Don't Harsh My Mellow: Americans messing with adjectives
Monday, August 3, 2009 at 4:45PM
This isn't related to accent... but I heard a clever turn-of-a-phrase the other day while listening to a podcast. Ken Ray (of "Mac OS Ken" fame) was reacting to a disturbing commentary on a recent news story and, referring to the author of the article, said...
"He really harshed my mellow."
I laughed out loud, and then laughed again as remembered back to my days teaching English in Japan when there were many... ummm... "animated discussions" between American English and British English speakers about Americans' annoying habit of butchering the Queen's English.
One of the recurring grievances in the break room was the American penchant for turning nouns into verbs. Take, for example, the noun "hospital": In the UK, a person with the misfortune of visiting such a place was "taken to hospital" or said to "be in hospital". But we Americans, discontent to allow a noun to simply remain a noun (as it was born to be), are compelled to mangle it into a verb... and thus, Americans are "hospitalized".
Now with Ken Ray's expression (I don't know if it's original with him or not), I realize that we Americans are now messing with adjectives as well...
Adjective #1: Harsh — "Unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses"... "cruel or severe"... "difficult to survive in, hostile"... "grim and unpalatable"... "having an undesirably strong effect"
Adjective #2: Mellow — "Pleasantly smooth or soft"... "relaxed and good-humored, cheerful"
And so these two adjectives are mangled into a verb and a noun, respectively:
"He harshed [v] my mellow [n]."
As a bit of a language purist myself, I can very much appreciate a Queen's English speaker's annoyance at taking such liberties with grammar. (Don't even get me started about how I feel about the increasingly common misuse of count/non-count adjectives in sentences like, "There were less people there last night". No, there were fewer people there... you can count them!)
But such is the ever-evolving nature of language. And, to be completely honest — and truly American??? — I must admit that I love the phrase. So thank you, Ken! And to my British (and Australian, and Canadian, and...) friends: Sorry to harsh your linguistic mellow! ;-)
Reader Comments (3)
We Americans also love messing with abbreviations too. Doctors or nurses often say: "I dee cee (DC) this patient to a sniff (SNF)!" What they mean is I DisCharge this patient to a Skilled Nursing Facility.
Your blog is very cool. Keep it up, Kevin.
NN
Yes, we have LOTS of abbreviations and acronyms. One of my favorites is "TLA"... as in, "There are too many TLAs in American English!" (TLA = "Three Letter Acronym"... LOL! ;-)
I'm glad you like the blog, NN... hope you'll stay tuned!
Good to know about this type of examples so that I can be better prepared to expect the unexpected.