blandiloquence & the blandiloquent few

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No visiting angel could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

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Olaf Stapledon

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‘Blandiloquence.’ Blandiloquence comes from a Latin word meaning “smooth-talking” or “flattering.”

blandiloquent (blan-DEL-uh-kwent)

adj., mild and smooth-talking, honey-tongued, flattering, ingratiating.

Interestingly … bland’s roots <latin> coincide with concepts like ‘melt’ and ‘mild.’

Anyway. The word does throw you off a bit. It’s a contradiction even a type of an oxymoron.

Bland + Eloquence.

“Bland” … without strong features.

“Iloquence” , from which you get eloquence, which means “persuasive … powerful discourse.”

So maybe it suggests a person without strong features,  but with some persuasiveness?blandifiquence saying nothing

For example. Chichikov, a character in one of Gogol’s books, is a lower-echelon civil servant with a corrupt past who specializes in what Gogol calls “blandiloquence” or elaborately empty compliments in the pursuit of persuading others to do things..

And that example leads me to why I decided to write about this <beyond the fact I learned a new word>.

There are not many things I dislike more than empty words. These are words that are ingratiating empty of any feeling or deep truth <or even simply a thought>. They are so light and empty of anything that they just seem to float along the top of meaningless drivel.

These words are NOT ‘less is more’ but simply words that are empty, vacuous, devoid of any meaingfulness. Use one, use many, nothing from nothing is still nothing. It does not matter when one is blandiloquent because.it still, aggravatingly, equals nothing.

Ok. The one thing I dislike more than empty words?

The empty person who uses them. The blandiloquent few.

Maybe I should just call them the bland people using eloquently empty words. The blandiloquent are vacuous shells, masquerading as people, who victimize us with words vacant of any thought.

You can recognize these people.

First. They are bland.

Without strong features.

Colorless with no depth.

Physically they swim hither and yon wherever the tide may take them. You have no idea what they stand for or what they believe in, they have never had an original thought in their life, and they seemingly have gobs of friends but no real friends.

Second. They are eloquent.

Persuasive in that they can weave a narrative/story with pretty vacuous words.

They know the words but don’t know the value of the words. In their eloquent flattery they find solace in a belief it is self-effacing while others see it as it is — a cheap blanket of words to warm the hearts of all they perceive as powerful, pandering to the powerful weak & pissing off the true with power.

Advertising great David Ogilvy once said this:

“Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.”

These idiots … the blandiloquent … stalk the hallways of every business, not just the advertising business <sorry Mr. Ogilvy, it has spread far far beyond your own domain>. The blandiloquent spend everyday spreading their cheap honey to anyone who deigns to stop and accept it.

bland magic in the headShame on anyone who accepts this cheap gift.

And shame on those who waste words as if they were a dime a dozen.

And, worst of all, shame on anyone who empties words to a point where they become hollow when used.

Words should have weight … gravitas … color … depth.

People who understand this embrace the burden of words.

Blandiloquence.

A beautifully horrible word. And a word we should all take note of.

To conclude.

We should take note of the fact this important word is teetering on the brink of extinction and, yet, it is quite possible it is needed more than ever in today’s world. Why? Because in its eloquence it can be used to prick the balloon of vacuous speech with its harsh uncompromising truth.

It seems like in today’s politically correct world a word like blandiloquence is too harsh a truth to recognize let alone speak out loud.

Bullshit.

It needs to be used more than ever in today’s vacuous speechifying.

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Written by Bruce