Quote by C.S. Lewis
But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative -- useless synonyms for or for .
Summary
This quote suggests that the act of verbicide, which refers to the killing or misuse of words, is mainly fueled by people's desire to express their judgment and opinions rather than accurately describe things. As a result, words tend to lose their descriptive nature and become increasingly evaluative in order to convey approval or disapproval. Eventually, they become completely evaluative and lose any meaningful descriptive value, becoming mere synonyms for "good" or "bad." Thus, the quote warns against the tendency to prioritize subjective evaluation over objective description in our use of language.
By C.S. Lewis
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