The use of "Unconfident"

[Bikafella]

I recently saw "unconfident" and agree with 'Alan' that it's an ugly word but the reason it was used was because of the "ignorance" of the writer in not knowing the conventional choice of "lacking (or lacked) confidence". In other words they automatically used "un" to mean the opposite of....but not all adjectives work with "un" although this has never stopped the way that Americans invent words and verbs.

Regarding "Megillah" whilst this Yiddish word has long been used by Jewish people to refer to a long winded story or event, (it is actually the name of the book telling the story of Queen Esther and the Jewish Festival of Purim) it is like a lot of American words that are filtering into the English language and being used by English people (here in the UK) without understanding the origin of the word. The Americans are much quicker at using/adopting Yiddish in their conversation than the English.'Stum' and 'Shmaltz' being only two other examples.

Normally, the definition given by a non-Jew falls very far short of the actual
definition/use of the word when used by Jews (and other Yiddish speaking people)- because Yiddish is far more expressive than English. Whilst 'Shmaltz' is actually chicken fat- using the word in a sentence about the description of a let's say a "shmaltzy "love scene in a film - can convey very little of the emotion as understood by a Yiddish speaker compared to an English speaker.

[Paot]

You are just explaining "slang" in a run around the bush way. Slang is words used in a intentional way that is not what was its original use. Also English, as we know it today, is just a mash-up of many languages.

Although I do agree that some slang exists because of ignorance.