Lazy, stupid misuse of great words #2: countless

I've already done one of these for the word "countless", but the lazy, stupid abuse of this wonderful word seems to be popping up a lot these days... or maybe I am just noticing it, for some reason.

A few days ago, shortly after I'd posted about how much I enjoy National Public Radio, I was driving in my truck and heard a music review on NPR about some musician -- I think he was a Brazilian in his seventies -- and the reviewer was enthusing about how this musician had "recorded countless albums".

Really.

"Countless albums"?

It's such a mind-bogglingly stupid misuse of "countless" that it makes my head hurt.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the musician in question is seventy-five years old. Let's also posit that he is an amazing prodigy who has recorded ten albums per year since he was twenty years old (obviously a ludicrous number, but bear with me). That's ten albums per year over the course of fifty-five years. Basic arithmetic gives us, then, a total of five hundred and fifty albums. I can count that high... can't you? Five hundred and fifty is so staggeringly, brain-bendingly not even close to "countless" that it takes my breath away.

There is no way -- not even REMOTELY -- that this musician, or any other, could have "recorded countless albums". -- PL

Lazy, stupid misuse of great words #1: countless

I'm not sure if this will become a regular feature of this blog, but I thought it was time to rant a little bit about something that aggravates me every time I see it, and I see it a lot these days. I am referring to the egregious misuse of the word "countless", which is defined by dictionary.com as follows:

adjective
too numerous to count; innumerable: the countless stars.

Synonyms 
numberless, endless, myriad, unlimited.

For some reason, in recent years, many writers have decided that rather than say "many" or "dozens" or "hundreds" or "thousands" or "millions", which would be far more appropriate and accurate in each respective case, they will use "countless", which is essentially saying that there is an infinite number of __________ … which, unless you are talking about, for example, stars in the infinite universe, is at the very least a WILD over-exaggeration.

And it gets to a sublimely ridiculous point with some of these misuses of "countless", like the one I saw on the back cover of a DVD at Barnes and Noble yesterday. I'd never heard of the group "Lady Antebellum", was intrigued by the name, and picked up the DVD to see what it was about. I flipped it over and read the following bit of copy on the back:

Really? "Countless" awards? Too many to count? I went to Wikipedia and looked up "Lady Antebellum", and in the entry for this group, there was a helpful listing of the various awards they have won since the group was formed in 2006. I counted forty-five -- a very impressive record, to be sure, but not even REMOTELY coming anywhere close to being "countless". I think pretty much anyone can count to forty-five in under a minute.

Why couldn't the copy writers who worked on this DVD just say "dozens", or "more than forty", or even just accurately say "forty-five so far"? How about the old reliable, which served well for a lot of years (and still does, in my opinion): "many"? I think it is due to an all-too-common phenomenon of our age which I think of as "witless exaggeration", a close relative of "ludicrous hype". This grotesque misuse of "countless" seems to be creeping into text everywhere… and it makes me cringe every time I see this great word so poorly, stupidly used. -- PL