Dear Marketing Juggernaut,

I write to ask that you please stop all this "pairing," which in an earlier, more innocent time, used to be expressed simply as "having with," or sometimes more hopefully, "enjoying with." I refer to the ingestion kind of "pairing." Apparel-related "pairing" ("I would pair it with the Juliana Satchel in Beige") insinuated itself into second-rate fashionspeak so long ago that it's past all hope of recalling. I mean the sort of pairing that has resulted in stuff like this:

I got a nice bottle of amarone for my birthday and I was hoping to pair it with a tasty dessert recipe. My working [...]