Word of the Day: Saccharine

Saccharine
-Adjective

Pronunciation:
- sak-er-in
- sak-uh-reen

Definition:
1. of the nature of or resembling that of sugar: a powdery substance with a saccharine taste.
2. containing or yielding sugar.
3. very sweet to the taste; sugary: a saccharine dessert.
4. cloyingly agreeable or ingratiating: a saccharine personality.
5. exaggeratedly sweet or sentimental: a saccharine smile; a saccharine song of undying love.

Etymology:
1670s, "of or like sugar," from M.L. saccharum "sugar," from L. saccharon, from Gk. sakkharon, from Pali sakkhara, from Skt. sarkara "gravel, grit" (see sugar). Metaphoric sense of "overly sweet" first recorded 1841.

Quote with the word:
"Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound."
- Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century), U.S. educator, child development specialist.

I think I've always said this word wrong.

I also quite like the quote you've used.

I like it, but I don't fully agree with it.

Give us more words we can use to insult each other!

At the place I used to work we made the saccharine that caused cancer in lab rats available to our consumers

"I like it, but I don't fully agree with it."

I think I do. It seems to fall kind of in the middle. I don't think kids should be totally shielded from all except sanitized versions of stories. I mean, I read the original Grimm's fairy tales when I was younger, and those things could be dark and violent... but it was within that structured context. To me, the quote is speaking against exposure to things that are violent or perverse purely for entertainment's sake. I don't know. Maybe it depends on the integrity/artistic ability of the format. I'd rather let a 12 year old watch Pan's Labyrinth than have them watch CSI: Special Victim's Unit.

Sorry, off-topic.

I get where you're coming from. I just speak from experience and don't think I'm corrupt in any real way. I've been laughing at gore in film and media for years now...I turned out great. Who knows?

It's because your heart is so unstintingly pure ; )

Hahah, you know me all too well.

I tried to get the English version, but the screen stayed blanc, for some odd reason. so I will post the Dutch one. The pictures show how rats, that were fed Aspartam all got cancers so big, they could use it as a pillow. Look at the images and then tell me if you still want to have diet Coke, or give it to your children...I strongly urge all my clients to stop using sweeteners, because they are poison:

http://www.aspartaam.nl/experiment/mijn_aspartaam_experiment1.html

Ingrid, those pictures are awful... why we do these things to animals in the name of science always baffles me. But I suppose it's good information, all the same.

Nah Ingrid, I believe, if anything, saccharine is more harmful than aspartame, if you're talking cancer. Unless the world's leading science organisations are unusually corrupt, this is all a bit of fear-mongering. The amino acids making up aspartame are found in all sorts of food (milk, fruits, vegetables etc) that our body breaks down in the same way. Unless you have a problem with phenylalanine metabolisation, aspartame has been globally tried and tested to be safe. People have been consuming it for 30 years with little negative effect.

The main reason people shouldn't have artificial sweeteners is because they taste like shit.

Soft drinks are generally terrible for you, of course. No nutrition, only sugar, flavour, colour, caffiene. The worst is the bubbliness- the acid which sucks calcium from your bones.

Obviously, I am drinking Passiona while I write this.