Word Warnings

“Young at heart” is one of those phrases like “55 and better” or “70 years young” that’s trotted out to dance around any suggestion of oldness—because we’ve all been taught that oldness is bad and embarrassing.

More than one dictionary says that “young at heart” means “energetic” and “playful” and stuff like that. (And that hairball “youthful” keeps coming up, too.) But here’s an idea …

Have you ever looked up a swear word in a dictionary and seen that it’s “generally considered vulgar”?

Maybe one day we’ll look up certain phrases and see that they’re “generally considered ageist.”

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