Skip to main content

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

Image of a man and a woman in a café with a speech balloon saying 'Did you just say discombobulated?' Image by TET and Leonardo.AI.

Discombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot.

It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'.


Seinfeld Quote: Jerry Seinfeld: What did you do to my car? George Costanza: I couldn't help it! Elaine moved the mirror, I got discombobulated. Elaine Benes: Oh, like you've ever been bobulated.
Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net

The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. 

My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'?

Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? 


Hawaii Five-0 Quote: [In a flashback to 2001, Danny is talking to Rachel on the phone] Danny: Yes, yes, I am scared, all right? I am also anxious and nervous. I am discombobulated-- yes, I use that word. But, most of all, I am happy. Okay? Let me break it down-- I am 60% happy, I am 30% completely terrified, and I am 10% discombobulated. Yes, it is a real word. See? This is why you suck at Scrabble.
Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net

I've noticed it gets used a lot by people who you generally don't associate with really big words (like more than four syllables at a stretch). I can't point to any specific use cases because, by the time I've rolled my eyes at hearing the word again, recording the moment for an article such as this never crossed my mind.

But then again, I've heard journalists, and news anchors use it commonly as well. In the case of news anchors I'd say it gets used more by the condescending, opinion spouting kind, than actual news anchors who read actual, real news.

Or maybe it just got revived because Eminem released the track Discombobulated three years ago from his album, Music to be Murdered By. I could see people latching onto that.

Either way, to me at least, it just makes you sound like you're trying too hard to sound like you know words and stuff. Just use confused. It's a perfectly fine word that doesn't feel the need to put anyone in a state of discombobulation about what it actually means.

TET Life Topics:

Comments

  1. Mum60September 04, 2024 5:42 PM

    I think I've heard of the word discombobulate before but wouldn't have known what it meant without looking it up.

    One person who used to use long words was Clive James, who I liked but I tried to read a book of his once when I was doing a Creative Writers' course back in the 80s I think and got bored by about the first couple of pages. I can't remember the name of the book now. I did ask the teacher at the time why he used such big words, but can't remember with time what her explanation was.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TET (David Arandle)September 05, 2024 4:13 PM

      I would have no problem with Clive James using 'discombobulated' given his entire career was built around his writing and books... and he clearly enjoyed language. It's just weird when celebrities who aren't known for any kind of wordsmithing or speaking words with more than two or three syllables use it out of nowhere.

      Now that you've heard it, and know what it means, you'll likely hear it used a lot more now.

      Delete
    2. Mum60September 05, 2024 5:51 PM

      When I do, I hope I won't become discombobulated! LOL! If I use it, I'm sure the people I mix with will give me a funny look, including family! :-)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art  image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Robot Uprising Update: 1X Plans to Build 100,000 Humanoids by 2027 - I, Robot's Vision of the Future Getting Closer

1X Technologies, Robot for the Home, Neo. B ack in 2022 Google announced it had a small army of 100 AI enabled robots training at the company to become home helpers. As far as I know these robots, which were visually, little more than a pedestal on wheels with a mechanical arm and a head full of cameras, haven't emerged in anyone's home (and haven't banded together, laser guns attached, to start robot Armageddon either). Undeterred by Google's lack of progress, along with the rapid advances in humanoid robots,  1X Technologies , a robotics company based in Norway and San Francisco, focused on creating humanoid robots for your home, plans to build 100,000 of its Neo Humanoid robots for the home by 2027. That puts them into I, Robot territory. Let's hope they don't own any big, omnidirectional trucks to facilitate the roll out on mass, while some old school, naysayer detective tries to warn everyone that something isn't right! 1X Technologies, who have at le
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

I'm Joining the Illuminati Brotherhood By Personal Invitation of Hiltom Rothschild... Wait, What?

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood  Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch
1 comment
Continue Reading »

If I Could Talk to the Animals... Maybe AI Can Make This a Reality?

W e've always been able to talk to animals, and it's sometimes said, jokingly, you may have a problem if they start talking back, but what if they could? One thing that AI is good at is processing data and spotting patterns, common elements, and highlighting relationships which makes it ideal for all kind of research, so why not studying the language of animals? It seems like science fiction but so were  real-time language translators not too long ago. What if you could understand exactly what your pets are saying to you and speak back to them (through a real-time translator) in their own language? While were not there yet, advancements in AI learning systems seem to suggest that the idea is no longer as far fetched and fanciful as it used to be. To be honest, using AI to decipher animal communication accurately, is something that never crossed my mind but I'm truly excited to know that this research is being done. Watch the Bloomberg Originals video, Could AI Unlock the S
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Book Review: Fourth Wing & Iron Flame - Rebecca Yarros - The Empyrean Series

I  wasn't familiar with Rebecca Yarros prior to receiving the first two books in her Empyrean Series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame , as a gift. (Note: links will take you to the audible product page versions of the book on Amazon and are affiliate links. You should be able to find links to physical copies of the books from there if you prefer). It's been a long time that I've read a book that I don't want to put down after the time I have to read for the day is over. These two books, which are not insignificant in size at 498 and 623 pages respectively are page turners from beginning to end (almost but I'll get to that later). The story is set in a fantasy mythical world where dragons and magic are common place. Fourth Wing opens as Violet, the younger, weaker daughter of a fairly infamous general in a dragon riders army, is pushed into the first year of dragon rider school, rather than her preferred, and prepared for, path of scribe school. Both her mother (the afor
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

TV Series Review: Batman: Caped Crusader (2024) *Very Minor Spoilers*

I 'm not a huge fan of DC animation in general, despite owning a lot of their movies and TV series on DVD. It may be because they tend to stick to adaptations of the comics a little too much, or it may be that the over exaggerated action that cartoons allow makes it feel like there's never any real stakes for the characters. With that in mind, if I'm going to like anything from DC Animation it's likely to be Batman related. I recently watched the entire Batman: The Animated Series when it came to Netflix, having never seen the whole series when it originally aired. Which I'm obliged to mention since Batman: Caped Crusader is helmed by the same creator, Bruce Timm. Just like that series, Caped Crusader is set in an undisclosed time period but the look, style, and lack of tech used, even by Batman, suggests somewhere around post World War II era, possibly stretching into the 1950s. It could even be 1930's but I feel the vehicles look a little more modern than th
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Movie Review: Madame Web (2024) *Minor Spoilers*

I 'm willing to bet a lot of people haven't seen this film, and probably will never plan to watch it. Madame Web was poorly reviewed by critics and largely ignored by audiences. For myself, I'll only see a Sony superhero movie in cinemas if Spiderman is actually in it. For everything else I can wait until it hits a streaming service I'm subscribed to. Sony's Spiderman/Marvel adjacent movies aren't actually terrible movies. They're not great movies either but I've never put one on and not watched it all the way to the end. I do find them watchable... just not really rewatchable. Madame Web is an origin story for the title character (Dakota Johnson), and three other future Spider Women (that I'm not all that familiar with) who suddenly find themselves being pursued by a dark figure with very spider-like powers. The problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the writers forgot that the main reason anyone comes to see a comic book superhero movie is to
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »