At year’s end there’s always a list–well, actually at any time of year there’s a list. But the worst words list comes at the end of the year. Some of these words I have not heard of, like selfie. Others I heard many times while the grandchildren were here–epic. Just in case you don’t know, anything that’s really good is epic. I had not actually read this list but heard about it on the news. No one mentioned curate. That one I read about in the NYTimes. Here’s is a quote from the Worst Words list:
To curate – to organize information on a web page or other non-museum entity.
Museums have curators, galleries have curators–are you a curator because you found 10 cute puppy photos and posted them on your wall? Probably not. Did we just curate this banished words list? We’d rather not say.
The article in the Times was really about a new blog by the curators at the Cooper-Hewitt called Object of the Day. There are some textiles, but I didn’t see a way to do a search, which means going through all the postings. Not onerous, but another rabbit hole for me.
Back to curate–I had noticed that I was hearing/reading that word much more frequently, but just thought I was out of the loop. It’s especially prevalent in decorating magazines. I just read an article about hanging pictures in groupings, which, of course, have been curated.