1015: "OCD Enough": Illogical Connotations (LITW 1) Sep 19, 2017

The purpose of language is—at its core—to convey an idea, being an image, a command, or whatever, to someone else. That means that while people tend to follow certain conventions—abiding by general definitions for words, and using grammar that is accepted by many—not everything said has to be entirely logical. Looking at initialisms, one can see that people tend to follow grammatical conventions with the (perhaps subconscious) notion that the initialism was its own word, at least in terms of conjugations, but even more basically one could notice that certain initialisms take on a meaning of their own, despite the lack of sense that would come of saying what each letter stands individually within the given context. For instance, the phrase "OCD enough" as in "I'm still OCD enough to correct myself" conveys the idea of extreme obsessive behavior, but saying *"I am obsessive compulsive disorder enough..." does not make sense; one would say "obsessively compulsive" or simply "obsessive" (or any other adjective) in that case. It is only because people already carry connotations to the word 'OCD' that it can be used so freely; at its most basic, arguably, language is simply about being able to call shared connotations to mind. If you want to see more examples of "OCD enough", there is a link to an advanced Twitter search here.