Wedndesday night while looking for a non-fiction article for my students on "kellygallagher.org." I was reading his most recent article, determing if my students would need it "edited" so it was readable for them, when I came across it. The sentence was:
Never use many, always use myriad or plethora. Never say bad, always use egregious.”
Level of Familiarity
I am very confident I have heard this word before, just not sure where. I even can picture it being said, I am thinking it was used in a movie or tv show I recently watched. Maybe even the news. I knew the word had something to do with negativity. Before I read it in the context above I had thought it meant going to extreme lengths to get away with something or making a preposterous claim.
What it Means
Dictionary.com defines this word as: extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant. Or as : gross, outrageous , notorious, shocking
Reflective Commentary
Turns out I was more right than wrong (I think). The word does have an aspect dealing with something preposterous. Both of my previously held defintions involved "going beyond" the ordinary, and that is the case with the word. So, I get where Gallagher's idea for using bad and egregious synonymously came from, he was trying to argue a point about the SAT's, but if we were in Jonas's community from The Giver and we tried to use egregious as a synonym for bad, we would get lectured on precision of language. I may use this word, I feel pretty comforatble with it, and like how it sounds :)
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