Great

I now use the word "great" exclusively in an ironic* way.

I'm sure at one point it was a word that might have come forth in order to appreciate the wonders of life and the universe, like "brilliant" and (if you're from Essex and in your late 30s) "skill". But now it just crops up at the end of statements like "Well, that's just great" or all alone with overtones of Blackadderian despair.

Great.

However, I still admire it's tricky homophonic qualities, and will never forget the email I once read from a disgruntled former employee who had railed against her boss for not defending her from being made redundant. She made much play of how this boss would be unable to cope without her due to his tendency to be disorganised and - crucially - misspell everything, a flaw that she would heroinically mend with her attention to detail and, er, encyclopedic grasp of the dictionary.

The subject heading?

Ungreatful.

Perhaps she, too, was being ironic.



* all right, I mean "sarcastic", but irony sounds so much more sophisticated.