My contribution to the English language

(Author's note: This is indulgent and silly. But hey, I'm back in the saddle!)

The ancient Greeks used a literary device called an epithet, in which a hyphenated phrase is linked to a noun, with examples being "wine-dark sea", "rosy-fingered dawn", and my personal favorite, "ox-eyed Hera".

Inasmuch as my colleagues (read: Mark and my brother) and I have always tried to emulate the ancient Greeks (mostly in our fondness for spears), we came up with our own epithet, "sad-sack bastard". It's an incredibly useful and versatile epithet, and in the last few years we came up with many ways to work it into our daily conversations.

Unlike many other phrases in the English language, the epithet "sad-sack bastard" works equally well as several different parts of speech.

Noun -"Quit being a sad-sack bastard."
Proper noun - "Well, look, Mr. Sad-Sack Bastard decided to grace us with his presence"
Adjective - "That's a sad-sack bastard thing to say."
Verb - "Stop sad-sack bastarding around."
Interjection "Hey! Sad-sack bastard!"

A sad-sack bastard, if you couldn't pick it up with the context clues, is not a desirable thing. Depending on the situation, a sad-sack bastard can be found brooding in his or her (it's gender neutral, another plus) room, listening to depressing music or obsessively pursuing meaningless goals in video games, ignoring the well-meant and potentially correct advice of friends and family, and generally refusing to directly interact with his or her problems.

The sad-sack bastard is not depressed. They may, at one point, have been depressed, for completely valid reasons, but those reasons and that depression no longer excuse their behavior. Neither is the sad-sack bastard put-upon. Again, they may have been at one point, but now they are either exaggerating the situation or needlessly prolonging it through their own inaction. The sad-sack bastard, it cannot be stressed strongly enough, is not to be pitied. They are playing up the unfortunate circumstances of the recent past to addressing the problems of the present or future.

The only way to stop the sad-sack bastard in your life, or yourself, if you happen to be in that unhappy situation, from sad-sack bastarding around, generally bringing the local populace down, is to force them to directly engage with the issues they or you have retreated from into the grim land of sad-sack bastard. I have always favored yelling as de-sad-sack bastarding tool, but other parties have also tried cuddling, reasoned discourse, lavish gifts, slapping, or the forced administration of alcohol. The important thing to provide enough of a shock, be it pleasant or not, to jolt the individual out of the ridiculous, self-pitying state of sad-sack bastardhood.

To sum up, my latest contribution to posterity, the epithet "sad-sack bastard", refers to a previously normal and effective person reduced to a state of brooding, whining uselessness by self-pity and inaction. The epithet itself is remarkably effective as a tool to pry the person to which it applies out his or her sad-sack bastardliness (see "Interjection") or as a cautionary device to ward off the unwary individual skirting dangerously close to its treacherous and rocky shores.

It's incredibly useful.