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Excessorise
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
excessorise

Excessorise

 

Listen to Professor Crystal

Excessorise. It's based on the word 'excess', of course. But it's a lovely play on words because it reminds you of 'accessories'. 'Accessorise' is actually an older usage, from the 1930s in the United States. It means to furnish with accessories.

'Excessorise' is unusual because there is no word in English, 'excessory', as there is 'accessory'. So when I heard the verb for the first time, I didn't really know what it meant - 'let's excessorise with some whiskey' somebody said - it was the first time I'd heard it, years ago. And I thought, 'excessorise?' - I thought it was 'accessorise' and then I worked it out, that it couldn't be, and I realised that it was based on this word 'excess' - 'let us drink to excess' it meant in that particular case. And that's how the word is used - to eat or to drink, or to take drugs, or whatever it might be, for personal indulgence in excessive amounts - that's the point - if you're excessorising, you're doing something excessively.

I've heard it applied to jewellery as well. 'He (or she) is really excessorised!' In other words, there's too much jewellery being used on the person. I've heard somebody talking about his car - or somebody else's car - usually you talk about somebody else's things in this way, not your own - somebody who had excessorised his car - in other words, it's got all kinds of little gimmicks and gadgets all over it.

And the other day, for the first time - I couldn't believe this - I heard somebody in a restaurant putting all sorts of things on his beef burger, all kinds of extras, onions and sauce and all that sort of thing - and somebody said 'hey, you're excessorising!' - talking about the beef burger!



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download transcriptTranscript (pdf - 42k)

download lesson planLesson plan - Teacher's notes, student worksheets with answers (pdf - 39k)

download audioAudio - Professor David Crystal on "Excessorise" (mp3 - 620k)
 
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