Generic House of Worship

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jessica from Milwaukee.

Hey, Jessica, welcome to the show.

Hi, Jessica.

Thank you.

What do you think?

What’s up?

What are you thinking about?

Well, my coworkers and I, I work in the news, and we were kind of brainstorming the other day.

We were trying to come up with some other words for church.

You know, I had a lot of kind of timely news stories about, you know, things happening at churches.

And we were wondering if there was another way to say it that’s broad, because if you get into, you know, say, cathedral or synagogue, those kind of, you know, go into a specific denomination or religious background.

And so we’re trying to think about one more broad term besides just the word church.

Because you’re using church too often in a news story?

Are you in broadcast media?

Correct. Yep, I’m in broadcast television.

So, you know, saying church three or four times, you know, gets a little redundant.

And so we’re trying to reduce the redundancy a little bit and maybe try and think of some other words.

What’d you come up with so far?

Church.

Well, let me ask you kind of the obvious question.

Why not say it more than once?

Well, I think that we want to be conversational, so I think we do want to say it more than once, and that’s okay.

But if you’re getting into it three or four times, it may be trying to find another way around it.

It just sounds a little more professional and educated sometimes.

Yeah, that’s my thinking as well.

I assume that’s where you’re going.

I read a book the other day where somebody inadvertently, apparently, used the same word, like really characteristic kind of like atypical word, three times on a single page.

And I was like, this guy, he needs to get a thesaurus because, no.

I’ve heard worse.

You have this aversion, right, to repetition.

Exactly.

It just feels wrong.

Sure.

Yeah.

So are you trying things like house of worship or house of prayer?

Or just temple?

Or does temples speak too much of specific religions?

I think it does.

Yeah, I feel like you say temple and you automatically think of a certain denomination.

So I think we just try and say church on a first reference and then work our way around it usually.

But it just kind of got us thinking, and so we’re all sitting in the newsroom kind of throwing out different words, synagogue, tabernacle, and so I was like, well, instead of going to the Taurus, I heard you guys on the radio later and thought I’d give you a call.

Right.

Oh, House of Divinity.

House of Divinity.

What about this super old-fashioned, archaic word that you personally, Jessica, can repopularize?

Fane, F-A-N-E.

What?

Fane.

Yeah, it’s archaic and old.

But you could be the one.

You could start it.

Yeah.

I could start the trend.

I like it.

Fane for church could be the new on fleek.

You could be the one, Jessica.

Well, you could also explain that fane, in the sense of church or temple, also gives us the word profane, outside of the church or temple.

Here we go.

But that’s not.

We can’t do it.

No, no, no.

She’s got a practical question.

A many grammar lesson in the newscast.

Yeah, that’s not going to work either.

Here’s the thing, Jessica.

You have basically defined yourself out of a good answer.

I guess, yeah.

We had a wonderful call the other day from a woman talking about the word plant.

She’s a gardener.

She does a TV show and, like, books and everything about plants.

And she was like, oh, my God, I’m tired of the word plant.

So we get you.

We understand.

But maybe it’s time to switch beats.

Talk to your editor.

Maybe.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do.

Whoever’s signing you all these stories in churches, like, for once, I want to go to an arena, or I want to go to a Congress.

Well, yeah, and you may be hearing it more than your listeners or your viewers.

Oh, that’s a good point.

I’ve got my eyes on it maybe too much, more than the average person.

I don’t know.

That’s hard.

I think House of Worship is a decent synonym, but again, you would wear that one real quick, right?

Yeah.

I mean, interchangeably.

If I make the story short enough, I suppose I can get around it.

Maybe our listeners would have some ideas.

Sure.

What should Jessica use besides using the word church over and over for a place of worship, for any kind of place of worship, not just for one particular religion?

Jessica, we’re going to crowdsource this and get back to you, okay?

I like it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So if you’ve got a word for Jessica, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or if you think that you know a synonym for a place of worship that can be used for any place of worship, send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.