Wikipedia to the rescue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-1961

Current location (optional) Blue Mountains, Australia via Haworth

er...right....so it's tidal wave then (or what we used to call an event like this before the loan word came along)! Going forward it's worrisome that we're compromising our vocabulary, englishwise.

Only our "vocabulary"?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1952-60

Current location (optional) Lincoln

Allan, it's not just any old tidal wave, it is a tw caused by seismic activity on the ocean bed. The famous Severn bore, for example, is not a tsunami. To qualify as a tsunami (and to bring us back to Arthur's and your and others' legitimate grouses about our language becoming more and more formulaic) it has to tick all the right boxes...

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Cottingham, East Yorkshire

"Dumbing down" the language is really serious stuff,lads. On a lighter note 15,ooo,ooo children starved to death last year.

If you dig deep enough, Alec, you may well find that the root cause of both phenomena turns out to be the same.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Cottingham, East Yorkshire

Quite possibly, Doug. However, one is,to all intents,irrelevant(in the great scheme of things) and one should fill you with horror (basically}

Quite so Alec.
My wife and I work to support a charity which raises 45K p.a. for Burmese refugee children in Thailand. Please send your cheque made payable to "Kidz in Kampz" to my home address which I'd be happy to let you have.
In the meantime I'll devote a little of my time to trying to ensure that our language remains meaningful as well.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Dig out your Fowler's English Usage. Or try looking up "pedantry" in your OED

Perhaps we should think of those other poor sods before us who had to put up with people introducing no end of foreign words into "our" language. "Physics" and "Algebra" to name two that would be familiar to any kbgs ob. Language evolves, and in the case of English spreads. American English is different to that spoken in Canada, Australian English is different to that spoken in New Zealand. As for the English spoken in Bombay, 20 years with my INdian born wife still confuses me. The English we spoke as lads has also disappeared. Get over it!

If you do get down among the pees in the OED then look up 'piety', 'pomposity' and 'intolerance' (where the pee falls silent). Definitions look for precision. Does that make definitions pedantic? If it does, Alec, then why send us off to the OED (that huge book of 'irrelevancies') and neatly contradict your own 'argument'? Language matters all right!

The other day, while continuing my ever-losing battle against mountains of paper, I came across a cartoon I'd saved from many years back. It shows an overweight American stereotype businessman, mouth full of cigar, bending down to a squatting peon in some jungle nowhere, who's pouring his last two or three drops of water onto his failing shoots. The American is proffering a miniature stars and stripes (such as sits on every pc American businessman's desk) to the haggard-looking man and he's saying: "Hey, I'm sellin' a dream here! George Washington, Old Glory, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, sea-to-shinin'-sea - what's not havin' enough to eat got to do with it?'

Clearly, language matters.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Cottingham, East Yorkshire

I'm with you on this one,John. Heaven forfend we should be so pompous as to believe that the English language is perfect and intolerant of the introduction of "foreign" words in the belief that they are bastardising the language. Language matters but only insofar as the message intended to be conveyed is clear and incapable of misinterpretation.If you wish to be transported to a higher plane then read Virgil,Shakespeare, Wordsworth,Milton et al. A pedant may look at your posting and say tut,tut,tut, it's different FROM but everybody will know what you mean so why get heated about it.
Shaun, you shouldn't make the assumption that I don't give my time, freely, to children's charities.

Concerning pedantry. My original post was not aimed at the organic mutation of the English Languge , which is part of its beauty and it is one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet and so it will perforce mutate. That universality is no small claim for a tiny island on the edge of the Atlantic.
My original post was remarking on the use /abuse of words like devastated and awesome.
We are living today in a world of instant news,( I can recall small paragraphs in the corner of an English daily paper that remarked that an earthquake in Turkey had killed 20000 some 10 days ago) but today we have instant news with instant pictures and so words like devastated and awesome can be supported by images that reflect the true meaning of those words.
When people use/abuse such words with ridiculous hyperbole then they are left with nowhere to go when something devastating and awesome comes along.
That's my whole point.

Point taken,Arthur. I consider myself suitably chastised!

Just a minor point, the Germans, Scandinavians and Dutch must feel very proud that a mongrel langauge cobbled together from theirs should be spoken over most of the planet

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-1961

Current location (optional) Blue Mountains, Australia via Haworth

Just one of the many gifts we bequeathed via the Empire to the rest of the world along with Cricket, Footall, Rugby, Shakespeare and Katey Price.

That's right, John, but don't forget the huge input from the Latin we most of us dreaded and loathed at school. One reason why English is so rich in synonyms is because of that input from two very contrasting sources. Then, of course, once Britain was administering a huge empire it was picking up words right, left and centre. As you pointed out in an earlier posting, particularly post-empire those Englishes developed individually, according to the needs of their daily life, but generally developed out of English English as it stood when the Brits finally left - one reason why the Indian English you are familiar with often sounds so quaint to a modern English (or Australian) ear, and why so many American expressions we fondly see as being ultra-modern are in fact throwbacks to Elizabethan and earlier English - I guess. It is logically impossible to be narrowly nationalistic about English because all the many variants up and down the world are as valid to the societies that speak them as is our own to us. We now have a situation in which (Bollywood being one source) we are 'borrowing' English from the English of our former colonies. And that's all positive and a 'natural' process. The dumbing down of language, which in varying degrees troubles some of us, comes from other directions, and is, in some measure, no accident, I think.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Cottingham, East Yorkshire