It's the herring that will perish.

I simply couldn't pass up sharing this passage from Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog (a book about English grammar):

Standard Enlgish is, of course, the version of the language that has resulted from years of hand-wringing about the speed with which it has changed. But to try to hold back language change is like trying, as Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have it, to cut down the largest tree in the forest with a herring. The tree will keep growing. It's the herring that will perish.

I thought so.

"illth"

As opposed to "health", you might guess. I found the word in a Books and Culture article by Eugene McCarraher called The False Gospel of Work. It is John Ruskin's word, and he seems to have used it as a dark synonyn for "wealth" (in Unto This Last). He defined it as "that which causes devastation and trouble in all directions." Hmmm. That should have entered the lexicon long ago, but it seems to have languished in the pages of Ruskin till now. Let's try changing that. Introduce the word to your friends. Use it once a week or so in an offhand and casual way. We need a word like this.

Oh, and by the way, the whole article is really interesting. You might call it, "Down with the American Work Ethic." A good read.