My Bike Tour (Radl-Tour) from Lübeck via Stralsund to Berlin took us to the Baltic Sea and then along the Lake Country around Müritz, where we saw many hospitable places.
And whenever we passed coffee shops and pubs, there were always signs saying: “Home-Made Cake“. Whenever I tried some of that cake, it sometimes tasted quite acceptable, but it was certainly not “home-made”. At least not in the sense of “baked by yourself in small numbers“. Because that is my definition of “home-made”.
For me, this is another example of the “new dishonesty” that keeps spreading. Well, basically it is not so bad, but for the purist, it is annoying.
On the same bike tour, I also found another very alluring formulation. It seems to get very fashionable:
Probably the world’s best XXXX.
Why don’t you look around yourself?
Sometimes, XXXX is for beer, sometimes for a certain sort of ice-cream, a special cake, an exceptional meal, a beautiful view. Basically, it can be used for all kinds of things. Just like “probably the world’s best” is often exchanged for “probably the world’s most beautiful” or some other superlative form.
When I first saw it, I actually found the sentence quite nice. When, however, I had to read it for the fifth time on one bike tour, I found it just as annoying as the “home-made cake”!
Those are the times when I, for a change, wish we had a very strict copyright and intellectual-property right. And whoever comes up with these kinds of sentences should be permitted to sue all the users of his sentence and get a lot of money from them. Now that would be the best punishment for imitating nonsense.
Except when you can actually prove that your cake has been home-made. Or if – to the best of human estimation – you actually have the world’s best of something to offer.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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