Stan has asked questions at his blog that have me quite puzzled. It's about some weird idea that a beer could be "world class" as if that is the apex of some sort of sliding scale of swellness.There are a lot of words or phrases like "world class" that are equally meaningless even if not synonyms - "top" and "foremost" not to mention "aficionado" and "connoisseur" come to mind for similar trembling vacuity. At least "favorite" means someone actually likes whatever we are talking about.

A teacher of mine once used a trick to get his students to stop using "very" which was a variation on having us interchange "frigging" for "very" every time "very" was proposed to be used in a sentence. The result was generally not to use either word, although once in a while a well placed "frigging" did the trick. So, what can we use instead of "world class" to test its meaninglessness in actual application? Anyone? To start you in the right direction, I might propose the following:

• "curled wass"
• "class of the world"
• "world classy"

It is likely every use of the phrase "world class" could be improved by exchange for "world classy" or at least it's failings would be better understood as a phrase. More to the point, is there any use of "world class" that could not be better stated in some other way?