Not so 'Awesome'

Okay, the grammar Nazi has another complaint.  This time it is with the word "Awesome," which is arguably one of the most overused adjectives in the English language.  Today, as of noon I heard the word used over 100 times - then I got tired of counting. Now I fully admit to being guilty of this overusage. (I used it 8 times myself when I was counting.)  Therefore, I am not advocating the stoppage of using this word.  After all, it can be the best word choice in certain circumstances, but I think we need to start limiting the usage.  There are so many more word choices out there.  Here's a brief and not complete exhaustive list of alternative words (courtesy of dictionary.com):

alarming, amazing, astonishing, awe-inspiring, awful, beautiful, breathtaking, daunting, dreadful, exalted, fearful, fearsome, formidable, frantic, frightening, grand, hairy, horrible, horrifying, imposing, impressive, intimidating, magnificent, majestic, mean, mind-blowing, moving, nervous, overwhelming, real gone, shocking, something else, striking, stunning, stupefying, terrible, terrifying, wonderful, wondrous, zero cool.

Personally, I find 'hairy' the most interesting!  And while not all of these words are completely exchangable with the word awesome, many are.  So let's start changing up our vocab and try using some new descriptors.  Wouldn't that be just awesome?!