{"id":2782,"date":"2025-05-27T08:49:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T12:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=2782"},"modified":"2025-05-27T08:49:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T12:49:54","slug":"when-everything-is-amazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=2782","title":{"rendered":"When Everything Is Amazing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I signed up for an online art fest that began today and features a wide variety of artists teaching workshops over the next two weeks. I pulled up a video on sketching birds. The organizer used the word amazing three times in the first minute: it was &#8220;amazing&#8221; that the presenter was from Canada; it was &#8220;amazing&#8221; that she was back for a second year; and we were &#8220;amazing&#8221; for joining them. She is not alone, in my humble opinion, in overusing amazing as an adjective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merriam-Webster defines <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/amazing\">amazing<\/a> as &#8220;causing astonishment, great wonder, or surprise&#8221; and their example is &#8220;an\u00a0<em>amazing<\/em>\u00a0story of personal bravery and survival.&#8221; I am neither surprised nor astonished that a presenter was able to join us from Canada nor that she joined in for a second year. As for my presence being amazing, I did sign up for the event and received a reminder email this morning, so it&#8217;s not much of a surprise that I am watching a video. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merriam-Webster&#8217;s thesaurus <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/thesaurus\/amazing\">lists 140 synonyms<\/a> and similar words for word amazing. I would suggest that it was <em>wonderful<\/em> to have the presenter from Canada join us for the second year. And, while not a synonym for amazing, I might have said I was <em>grateful<\/em> for the viewers who chose to tune in to the video. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The English language qualifies to be described as amazing, I think, with a depth of expression that can move us from surprising to amazing to awe-inspiring. The next time you are tempted to describe something as amazing (or awesome as I think that gets overused as well), consider using a different adjective that gets at the heart of what you are trying to say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or, maybe we should just accept that everything is awesome and amazing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/StTqXEQ2l-Y?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I signed up for an online art fest that began today and features a wide variety of artists teaching workshops over the next two weeks. I pulled up a video on sketching birds. The organizer used the word amazing three times in the first minute: it was &#8220;amazing&#8221; that the presenter was from Canada; it &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=2782\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When Everything Is Amazing<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[748,749],"class_list":["post-2782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thinking-out-loud","tag-language","tag-synonyms"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-IS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2784,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions\/2784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}