Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

"troubadour"

NNNNGGGGGRRRRGRGHHH! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

i know someone who says "dub dub dub"

she is from seattle

Look. There is no race of people on Planet Earth that can be simply described as "green". Please shut the fuck up.

...or polka-dotted! Yes, ha ha. Now, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

i know someone who says "wubbily wubbily wubbily". they also call their mobile phone their "mobidilly diddly". as annoying as this sounds i find it quite endearing.

I will kill them all, and my life will improve considerably as a result.

For me, the fact that they answer the phone by saying "pronto" more than makes up for it.

Really? He's Donald Trump for the sole purpose of telling me about this Visa check card? If it weren't for that, he'd be a Senegalese greengrocer?

Sorry if this has been covered, I took a quick look & didn't see.

I find I do this sometimes . I'm fairly sure I did it before the Jay-Z song! Sometimes the server will call attention to the construction by saying something like "You sure can!" or "Absolutely!" -- at which point I feel a very brief moment of awkward self-consciousness which then dissolves into a longer moment of cheery satisfaction at their response.

XPOST

Yes, if you take only the literal words, and ignore the standard phrasing (the verbal cognate of a rolling-of-the-eyes), which acknowledges that the elimination of the negation is ironic, and not intended to change the meaning.

You hadn't. I was surprised that you of all people were taking exception to the term!

No, I think people the phrase does literally mean that, and therefore there's nothing sarcastic about the phrase. (sure, sometimes people use it when they don't mean it, i.e. hyperbolically, but the initial usage was not hyperbolic) I'm not saying that everyone who uses it thinks about the literal meaning of what they are saying, and why their intonation corrects for its literal incorrectness, but they do know the meaning of their words when intoned traditionally. And I don't think it's a bastardization when the 'common idiom' is less common than the bastardization.

Accent, it's actually supposed to be "the proof of a pudding is in the eating". Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it, certainly more than the mis-abbreviated form.

Er, yes. Right, which is why I hate the abbreviated form so much. For the same reason as people don't like "I could care less". It doesn't mean anything.

Currently I also hate "of" being used instead of "have" because people don't understand contractions.

But it does mean something? Sure, it's sarcasm, which ain't great, but you can't say it doesn't mean anything without being wilfully ignorant.

Also, why does no one talk about "psychopaths" any more, but always of "sociopaths." That hard K sound gives the former more crazy authority. The latter just sounds like you have trouble on the school playground.

And this final gripe: the reason I gave up on Anne Rice's vampire books was not because the series shit the bed, even though it did—it was her constant use of the word "preternatural." She had to keep dropping it into the conversation. It's like she had a crush on a fucking WORD.
Having stylistic objections to Anne Rice is kind of dumb, I know. But those first books totally sucked me in. Even when they started to go bad, I followed for a little while.
Where are people's editors? Where's MY editor?
I'm going to stop myself. Right now.

: "How you doing today?"
: "Any better and I couldn't stand it."

My latest problem is the habit of media figures, bureaucrats, and students who want to sound intelligent appending a preposition to verbs. "Separate OUT," "divide UP," "play OUT," "win OUT" – why??? In every case they're redundant and look awful on paper.

"On April 18, 2008 CASA will hold our 1st Annual 'Light the Night' event at Immanuel Baptist Church (parking lot)."

You can't have an "annual" anything if it's only happening for the first time!

People who get con-fuzzed about things.

My latest problem is the habit of media figures, bureaucrats, and students who want to sound intelligent appending a preposition to verbs. "Separate OUT," "divide UP," "play OUT," "win OUT" – why??? In every case they're redundant and look awful on paper.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7:55 AM (Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7:55 AM) Bookmark Link

Because that is how American English tends to be spoken?

Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spinoff, rundown ("summary"), shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback ("decrease"), rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up ("stoppage"), stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in ("inform"), kick in ("contribute"), square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across ("meet"), stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up ("frame"), trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out.[14][15]

Using "of" instead of "have" is tremendous

xp: err, I guess you're talking about verb forms rather than nouns

Yes. And in every case I cited the preposition is unnecessary.

language would kind of suck if it was efficient and orderly

orderly efficient useless language if w'asnt and be it would