Thread: Remove this word from the english language

The part of the today's use of closure that I have a hard time with is best illustrated by either missing airliners around Malaysia. The media saying that the families of victims can't have closure until they bury their relatives. Does anyone truly expect that anyone from either of those two flights is alive today? There will be people unaccounted for but no less dead. Will the relatives pine away for the missing victims forever, expecting them to walk in the door some day? What does the presence of a body signify?

Originally Posted by Birnando

This is very true.
For me, as a Norwegian, I experienced what I would call a culture shock the first time I visited the US.
It was in North Carolina and every darn stranger was asking us how we were doing.
Even people we met at the sidewalk or in an elevator.

Before we could even reply they were long gone.
We felt it very unpolite
If you ask a question, stop the hell up and listen to the answer.
Or don't ask!

Oh, and asking a Norwegian how the family is doing is a big nono, so that made a few red ears on us as well
I know, we are damaged from all the cold weather and the lack of sunlight.

Have a nice day.

Originally Posted by Splashone

The part of the today's use of closure that I have a hard time with is best illustrated by either missing airliners around Malaysia. The media saying that the families of victims can't have closure until they bury their relatives. Does anyone truly expect that anyone from either of those two flights is alive today? There will be people unaccounted for but no less dead. Will the relatives pine away for the missing victims forever, expecting them to walk in the door some day? What does the presence of a body signify?

You have to ask yourself what is the purpose of a funeral? Does it matter to the deceased? I think not. It's for the living so they know the person is really dead cause you got the body right in front of you.

Our society seems to place a premium on having the body. That's why we are always looking for war dead from WWll and why when there is a mine disaster they spend weeks or longer digging up folks already buried. There is this sense about them coming home to make the living feel better.

It's just how we as a society deal with death and we deal with it very badly and always have. Dying folks are all too often spirited away from the world and just disappear with just the immediate family and best friends to really deal with it.

You all know in hospitals when someone dies they don't wheel the body covered to the morgue. They have special carts that look like beds and they can crank down the bed so it looks flat and no one gets upset about the deceased and having to see him.

When I was too young to work I used to volunteer in the City Hospitals in NYC and when you arrived in the morning and asked about an empty bed that was occupied by a very sick person yesterday the nurse would come over and whisper in your ear "he expired".

Agreed. A term invented by a new age woman.

I dislike all nouns that have metastasized into verbs.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

the nurse would come over and whisper in your ear "he expired".

I knew a date was secretly tattooed on all of us somewhere!

Originally Posted by WW243

I dislike all nouns that have metastasized into verbs.

But the verb metastasize means the spread of a disease to another part of the body - what's it got to do with language?

Poetic license!
Examples: Source and Curate.....my use of the word metastasize was a hyperbole.

Originally Posted by UKRob

But the verb metastasize means the spread of a disease to another part of the body - what's it got to do with language?

Originally Posted by UKRob

But the verb metastasize means the spread of a disease to another part of the body - what's it got to do with language?

Metastasize definitions,


v. To be transmitted or transferred by metastasis.
v. To be changed or transformed, especially dangerously: "a need for love that would metastasize into an insatiable craving for attention” ( Michiko Kakutani).
v. To spread, especially destructively: "[disinformation] ... that even now continues to metastasize ... to such a degree that myth threatens to overthrow history” ( Gore Vidal).

I disagree ghost are very real.