The Q-Word

Do you ever experience word rage? You know, a word that gets up your nose, or bugs you so much, you want it to be outlawed? One such word for me is, quintessential. In one week I came across it four times in a single book, in a Real Estate ad, and in a description of a house plan.

It stops me in my tracks every time. I think it's clumsy, full-of-itself, and vague. It's an uncomfortable word to say aloud, similar to, "wasps nests." When it's used as the sole depiction of a setting or an object, I'm flummoxed. What is the writer trying to tell me? That it's the ultimate? Typical? Dull?

An adjective is fine if it gets the job done but one man's quintessential Tourist Mecca, might be another man's quintessential Bizarro Land. How can the reader decide which it is for him or her without a more detailed description?

After giving it a great deal of thought, I have decided that using "quintessential" as the modifier of a noun and not offering further explanation, is a covert attempt by the writer to control the readers' thoughts. The writer expects, no, demands that the reader visualize the object being described exactly the way the writer intends it to be seen. If the reader is unable to do so, then so be it. The writer knows what he or she meant, if the reader doesn't get it, that's their problem.