So I was flipping through the channels and had the misfortune of landing on CNN during the Piers Morgan Propaganda Hour. For the few seconds I was there, the guest yammered something about how she’s “a fierce advocate for whatever the hell I’m yammering on about.” Fierce? Hmmm.
In the past few years I’ve heard the word “fierce” being tossed around more and more. And it seems like every time I hear it, it’s in the context of some political activist… seemingly almost always a leftie (I don’t recall Ted Nugent, say, claiming to be a “fierce advocate of gun rights” or Rand Paul being a “fierce advocate for lower taxes”). And something about the usage of “fierce” just grates on me. When I think of “fierce,” it’s something like this:
Or this:
But it seems like what “fierce” is being used to describe is “someone who just won’t shut the hell up about their particular hobbyhorse until they browbeat you into declaring that you, too, think it’s just completely awesome and fantastic.”
There are four definitions for it on Dictionary.com:
1.menacingly wild, savage, or hostile: fierce animals; a fierce look.
2.violent in force, intensity, etc.: fierce winds.
3.furiously eager or intense: fierce competition.
4.Informal. extremely bad or severe: a fierce cold.
I suspect the “fierce” abusers are going off definition 3, but it just doesn’t seem to work quite right.
It just sounds… lame. Like they’re trying too hard, or trying to convince themselves that their obsession is something special.