I wrote this sentence in an essay: “I learned that, when a thunderstorm was overhead, lightening cracking over thunder, it rattled the tent and shivered the trees, and in its awesomeness, you could hear sailors keening and the silence of birds as they burrowed deep into tree branches.”
The writers in the group flagged “awesomeness” as the wrong word choice. Awesomeness? What is wrong with you, I thought, what is wrong with awesomeness? It is a perfect word.
Merriam-Webster defines it as “a quality that inspires awe.” The Oxford Dictionary says it is “the quality of being extremely impressive or daunting.” But the Online Slang Dictionary explains it to mean “very good, excellent, fun, or otherwise appealing.”
And there, as Shakespeare said, is the rub. My thunderstorm was not fun or otherwise appealing, it was daunting and extremely impressive and, well, awesome. Just, apparently, not to my readers.
There are other words I could use: extraordinary, spectacular, formidable, astounding, impressive. But none of them mean exactly what I meant when I wrote the sentence.
I look for synonyms for the popular use of awesomeness and find mind-boggling, mind-blowing, out of this world, amazeballs, and badass.
There is one word in that list that comes close to my meaning, but I’m not sure:
“I learned that, when a thunderstorm was overhead, lightening cracking over thunder, it rattled the tent and shivered the trees, and in its badassness, you could hear sailors keening and the silence of birds as they burrowed deep into tree branches.”
Photo: NASA
