SURREAL: How often do you hear this word? At least once a day, usually several times. Everything is “surreal,” from a person’s slim win at a race, to being a survivor of a drive-by shooting, to watching the birth of your baby, to getting a new tattoo. All these things are significant events to the person experiencing them. But are they so strange that they don’t seem real? It would seem that the gush of adrenalin through the system at the time of the event would make them feel very real. “Surreal,” then has come to mean simply something that is frightening or painful or mildly unbelievable. If the event truly is so unbelievable, weird, strange, unreal, dreamlike, bizarre, or odd, why not use one of those descriptors and give the overused, no-longer-meaningful “surreal” a break?
On the other hand, I believe that the English language itself is totally surreal. Ask anyone who has ever tried to learn it.