In order to help you get a better sense of why I am so adamant about these terms (and terms like them), I am pasting here a passage from George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language." I think it will help you understand my position. Also, notice that he mentions the Catholic Church and one of his examples is from The Book of Ecclesiastes.
"Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary
criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking
in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural,
vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do
not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.
When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality,"
while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar
deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and
white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once
that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly
abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something
not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have
each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In
the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt
to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a
country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of
regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word
if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private
definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements
like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The
Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to
deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another
example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an
imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of
the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that
success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate
with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must
invariably be taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains
several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full
translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly
closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into
the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because
no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like
"objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his
thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away
from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first
contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday
life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words
are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images,
and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains
not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a
shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the
second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to
exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur
here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on
the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my
imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes. As I have tried to show, modern
writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning
and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming
together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and
making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is
that it is easy.
It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion
it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made
phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to
bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged
as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are
dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall
into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to
bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a
sentence from coming down with a bump.
By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms,
you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your
reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a
metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist
octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be
taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in
other words he is not really thinking."
From :
http://mla.stanford.edu/Politics_&_English_language.pdf where you can read the entire text if it interests you. I highly recommend the entire essay.
