Reverse engineering the thesaurus.

This report is about technically correct yet poor English which should have been rooted out in school. So ultimate blame for the following rests with the Education Department.

This SMH article says

"Mr Penman has denied the claim and is pondering legal action of his own..."

Pondering? Hmmm, yes and no, but mainly no.

It appears that the thesaurus chose this word, like a very subtle reminder of that Friends episode where Joey uses a thesaurus to translate "They're warm, nice people with big hearts" into "They're humid, pre-possessing homosapiens with full-sized aortic pumps". This isn't exactly how 'pondering' should be used either.

If I reverse engineer "pondering" using my own thesaurus there are many more suitable alternatives for a weighty issue such as legal action, such as "considering", "contemplating", "deliberating" or even "thinking about".

For fluffier issues such as what colour to paint the wall, "pondering" is indeed a reasonable choice, along with "wondering", "mulling", "musing" and the universal "thinking about".

English needs to change with the times and adapt, and our professional media lead this, but this fancy word just made it hard to read and is thus