I made a concerted effort to do absolutely nothing today, and I must say, for the most part, I was entirely successful.
Luckily, I yesterday managed to avoid using any of the “Thanksgiving Phrases to Avoid” given on my Forgotten English desk calendar:
There may be noticed a ludicrously vulgar refinement of speech common to pseudo élégants, namely the use of synonymes so awfully select as might well astound a [perfectionist]. We heard of one young man in America who, desiring some stuffing with his turkey, asked for ‘some of the insertion,’ exquisite refinement with a vengeance. [And] the old joke of ‘decapitating the luminaries,’ for snuffing the candles, is continually and seriously being realized in America. Really well-educated people…are infinitely more careless in their expressions than those less favored, whilst the elevated style, occasionally necessary in literature, would be considered by gentlemen vulgarly pedantic in ordinary society.”
Ah yes, that old joke about decapitating the luminaries. That had high society rolling in the aisles back in 1844.