Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, sickos. I know that “masticate”, another word for “chew” (like this language didn’t already have enough goddamn synonyms), sounds like “masturbate.” Ha ha, sex funny. I’ve heard it all before—but what you haven’t heard before, and what you need to hear, is that I’m sick and fucking tired of that dumbass, trash-tier, low-effort, beaten-down, weak-willed, and agonizingly lame joke. Let me tell it to you straight: masticate is a full-on bad word. No—not naughty, just bad. Poor in quality. A failure. Doesn’t pull off its one job.
Let’s talk about some other words for what masticate means. Chew, munch, chomp, crunch—all of these words have a sense of immediacy, of onomatopoeic excellence. In the way that “boom” conveys a friggin’ explosion and that “slash” evokes something sharp cleaving a separation with force, “chew”, “munch”, “chomp”, “crunch” invite the speaker, listener, writer, reader, to experience the eating. They’re one syllable, simple, they have that “ch” sound of teeth clenched together in the embrace of feeding.
Does ‘masticate’ pull this off? Does ‘masticate’ invite you to part your lips and dive into the wide world of linguistic luxury? Don’t say anything—the answer is no. The best that ‘masticate’ can pull off is somewhere between jerking off and getting molasses stuck between your molars.
“Woah woah woah woah woah,” you might say. “Who do you think you are, trying to dictate how I use language? We some kind of police state? Some kind of Maoist uprising? Some kind of SJW bullshit, liberals-have-started-picking-random-words-out-of-the-dictionary-to-cancel?” No, dipshit. Police enforce the law, just or not. Mao was a glutton for worship and power. “Liberals” concern themselves with a perception of the common good. I’m telling you this because I am personally insulted whenever someone uses ‘masticate’ and gives the little fucker of a word the chance to rear its malformed head one more time. So stop using the word ‘masticate’—do it as a favor to me, alright, or I’ll do you a favor and shove my boot down your throat and give you something better to munch on.
