Well, it seemed to me that the original post was about the apparent dumbing-down of language. Along similar lines, a current down-dumbing locally is the tendency to refer to a festival as a "fester". That could stop and I'd be glad.

The Shambles does appear in this thread to be the "playground punching bag"; and catspaw49 seems more than a little full-of-self. You yourself become pretty tiresome, Spaw...