Over his office door, storied New York Times language columnist William Safire had a sign: “Abandon ‘hopefully’ all ye who enter here.”

It’s an allusion to the words above the entrance to Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

But because that was written before I was born, and you know what I’m trying to say when I misuse “hopefully,” you’re, like, old and boring me when I’m trying to text Rachel.

The day started well, with my dentist, Dr. Katz, taking me up on my suggestion to play “Memories” (from “Cats”) over the intercom in his waiting area as an “oral/aural” – ha, ha – gag, and laughing at both my “I have an inconvenient tooth” and “You can’t handle the tooth” puns. When he took an impression and I said it was more of an imitation than an impression, he smiled in a patronizing if dismissive way and said he’d use it.

Then the trouble started. I went to the grocer’s for some tooth-friendly food, and asked for “pitted olives.” The bilingual deli maven pushed the packaged scoop over the counter. They had pits. I said, “No pits.” He said “unpitted”? I said, “When I want a chicken without bones, I say, ‘boned,’ not ‘unboned.’ ” He said, “What do you say when you want shrimp without veins? ‘Veined’?” I said, “De-veined.” He threw me a knowing and contemptuous glance, and I skulked to the register.

When I got home, Rebecca was watching HGTV, where they seem incapable of describing a home or its features without using the five words “nice,” “very,” “just,” really,” and “wonderful.” For example, while a couple first sees, let’s say, new bathroom shower tile: “It’s just really wonderful, and very, very nice.”

Same for Antiques Road Show: “What you have here is a very wonderful, really nice manuscript of 20 of Shakespeare’s lost plays. Do you have an idea what they’re worth?”

Then, on the late night sports wrap-up, a local athlete got involved with the law, and said things like (paraphrasing): “I exercised poor judgment.” “I made bad choices.” “I put myself in the wrong position at the wrong time.” (Workshop exercise: Substitute the name of a famous criminal like Hitler or Manson or Madoff as the speaker for those quotes, and start laughing.)

Does anyone ever speak concretely and frankly any more? In a parallel fictional bizarro world, someone else in the same position as that athlete might have said something like this: “I was drunk. I beat up a helpless old cab driver for fun. I ran away and got caught. I think my talent and money make me privileged and better than the fans who pay my salary. I’m an arrogant celebrity, and being famous – for anything – is all that matters in America. My PR rep told me to read this, and in a week no one will remember my victim’s name.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit he got off a classic – if unintentional – oxymoron: “It was a pretty ugly scene.” “Pretty ugly” – good one.

This is all by way of prelude to the NFL season. The Bears look great. Cutler under center.

But the NFL season is also “Death to the English language” season, so I’ll run linguistic interference in this blog. My pet peeve (We live in a city apartment; it’s the only pet we can keep) is the dangler: “Talking with Coach Smith in practice this week, he mentioned . . . .”

“What dangler? You’re old and boring me and you know what I’m trying to say. Rachel?”

Basta! Stop the madness! Rage against the machine!