On 13/06/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Pompous Bullshit English?
It (British/Commonwealth English) tends, in my (probably biased) experience, to be used by people trying to put on airs and sound pretentiously superior, like real estate developers naming a development "Harbour Centre" when it's nowhere near a harbo(u)r nor particularly close to the center/re of anything important, or fashion magazines ("Glamour") that desperately want to show how elegant they believe themselves to be, or snooty academics who would rather be involved with an "encyclopaedia" than a commoner's "encyclopedia".
I find it especially bothersome to encounter the word "paedophile", since I hardly think pedophiles deserve to be dignified with a pretentiously dressed-up spelling.
I believe a small number of people not blessed with US citizenship have been known to use it, but I guess the inflated pomposity is just the foreign inferiority complex kicking in.