But we still need them, says Sue de Groot in The Pedant Class.

There are, as has been pointed out occasionally on this page, words that are abused, misused and overused. There are also words that are entirely unnecessary.When I say "unnecessary", I don't mean in a morally judgemental sense, as in "was it really necessary to call him a turnip?" I mean useless, pointless, needless, excessive, unwarranted, redundant, wasteful, gratuitous, superfluous, wanton, expendable, surplus to requirements, uncalled-for, dispensable, nonessential, unmerited, to no purpose, unrequired, supererogatory words. In other words, words we do not need.Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there should be just one word for each thing, object, article, concept, item, artefact, commodity, device, gadget, contrivance, instrument, utensil, tool, implement, entity, body, whatsit, thingamajig, gizmo, doohickey and dingus.I'm not saying we should bin all synonyms. It might make speaking and writing a lot tidier, but it would also make it a lot more boring.story_article_left1What I am saying is that there are words, like things, that seriously, honestly and totally have no point. Speaking of things, there is an entire website (or perhaps I should just say "website", since who has ever heard of half a website?) called The Useless Web, where you can spend hours, no, days, clicking a button that says "sell me some useless stuff". I had to drag myself away after being directed to actual, real, existing places (in the virtual cyber sense) where I could order yodelling bacon, canned unicorn meat and instant underpants (just add water).But back to useless words. According to The Economist's style guide, the word "very" is the most unnecessary of all. Other words mostly deemed superfluous are "area", "community" and "action" when they are attached to other words that describe the area, community or action perfectly well already. (Why say "farming community" when you can simply say farmers? Or "strike action" when strike will suffice?)I was pleased to see, on the Economist's long list of non-necessities, an advisement to never say "for free". It's just free, OK? Similarly, there is never any need to say "free gift" because a gift is free by definition. Unless it is given by a blesser.But wait now, my point in all of this was to arrive at the word "prestigious". I am very tired of prestigious. Prestigious has outlived its usefulness, lost its shine and shed every last shredded remnant of its prestige, if you ask me.What, I ask, is the point of referring to any prize, position or pedestal as prestigious? "Leonardo DiCaprio won a prestigious Academy Award." You don't say. "Mr Smith was appointed to a prestigious seat on the board of directors." Uh-huh. "I received an invitation to the prestigious masked ball." Right on.story_article_right2Surely no one would bother mentioning an award, prize, event, position or anything else they wanted to boast about if it was not prestigious? I have never read a CV that mentions "winner of the completely common, insignificant, obscure, ordinary, unimportant, unknown, humble and modest award for amateur yodelling".Another language-loving blog - I would name it but I navigated away from it by accident after being distracted by an advertisement for a hamster potty, which sounds like it should have prisoners of Azkaban or deadly phoenixes attached to it on a book cover but is in fact a real, actual thingamabob that you strap on to your hamster when taking it for walks in hygienic places.Anyway, the blog whose name I can't remember also had a whole lot of stuff to say about unnecessary words, namely that if we could absolutely eliminate words such as whole, lot, absolutely, totally, entirely, completely, literally (especially literally), definitely, certainly, probably, actually, basically and virtually from our vocabularies, not to mention clip-on superlatives such as "super" and "uber", then communication would be clearer, cleaner and more comprehensible. And way less interesting. But I still think "prestigious" has gone to the dogs...