Don't Use "Various"

Recently, I have decided that "various" is officially the ugliest word in the English language. It is worse than "really" and "very" and "like", all rolled into one. In fact, if every use of "various" was replaced with "fucking", I would be a happier person (try it out some time, it may end up being hilarious).

So what's my problem? Why all this hate for the word? It's not profane. It's not even a dumb-person word.

Stop right there because I already disagree. It may not be profane, but it is definitely a dumb-person word. In fact, that's part of the reason I hate it so much. "Various" is the word that dumb people use to sound smart. It's three syllables, doesn't sound common, and has a useful meaning.

"Various" just means many. Any time you ever want to talk about a group of things, you can talk about "various things". But why would you do that? There are countless synonyms that you can use. Let's take the sentence "Various colors are beautiful." Now let's replace "various" with other words. We could use "many", "lots of", "tons of", "several", "different", "countless", "numerous". Oh, and let's not forget the joke example, "Fucking colors are beautiful." (Maybe not hilarious, but an amusing change to an originally-harmless sentence.)

My problem with the original sentence is that it comes off as pretentious. It sounds like the speaker either wanted to sound smart or simply couldn't think of a better word. Out of all the other possibilities I listed (and be sure there are many more that weren't listed), I think that "many" or "several" would fit much better. None of the other words are fancy, so why use a fancy-sounding adjective? It's jarring.

Now, I know that this is 100% opinion. I'm sure most people don't have any problem with the word, which is probably why they use it all the time. I also know that my argument could be made about most words, especially the "you can always use a different word" part. However, I still stand by the belief that there is never a need to use the v-word. Even profanity has certain excuses. "Various" has no good reason to be used, thus making it worse than profanity. And what could be more offensive than constantly using a word worse than profanity? Just say no, kids. Just say no to "various".