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

agree!

there are two clear usages:
strategic, as i have described and has been verified by in orbit and others
pedantic, which does feel insulting and self-important when you are on the receiving end

could it be that these two things are actually the same, and one is from the perspective of the speaker and the other is the perspective of the listener, only they are different speakers and listeners? yes! i believe so. ...if that makes sense
(lol)

lol

look i'm exaggerating a bit but honestly... use other words. it probably doesn't help that my boss uses this phrase literally 5-10 times per meeting.

not related, but another usage that annoys - "The 1800s" to refer to the entire 19th century, and the like. I know it has a long history, but it's confusing - "the 1890s" clearly refers only to 1890-1899, so "the 1800s" refers to 1800-1809, case closed. It also suggests a really imprecise relationship to history, as in this article I'm reading about a photo project to make a Google Street View of "New York in the 1800s" - well, clearly these images are going to be from quite a range of times, which would be something useful and maybe thought-provoking to keep in mind as you use this piece of software. In this situation, "the 1800s" might as well just be "those old-timey times."

Still thinking that "does that make sense?" much more acceptable than "...if that makes sense".

However, along those lines, more work-related speak that I hate: Long statement, particular regarding some new idea which hasn't been discussed or agreed upon, but ending in "right?"

For example, "This month we've seen a lot of improvement, but our goal of 100 dead rabbits per day means more emphasis on sharper knives and bigger traps, right? There are a lot of ways to make this happen, right? We've heard the goals that management is pushing down, right (notion of this actually being a question is thrown out at this point), and because of the firm-wide objective, right, of ensuring as many dead rabbits as possible, right, we're leveraging the resources from the Mammal Removal group."

This kind of management-speak is progressively more effective the longer the manager speaks without interruption. By the end of a long rant, you've been overwhelmed by the number of points taken for granted as having been "right", that you keel over in desperate submission.

I use "if" and "does" interchangeably and frequently when teaching, especially when talking to students individually. I teach web and design classes so I'm often trying to explain abstract or totally unfamiliar ideas about file structure, how browsers load and display sites, image resolution, etc.

I'm often using analogies or examples and check in a lot to see if how I'm explaining something works with their level of familiarity and how they personally process information to come to an understanding of a concept. They come from all sorts of backgrounds and have wildly different ways of understanding how things work and I want to know if I should try a different tactic.

Usage #1, speaker

one of my philosophy professors always said right in the form of a question

especially as he would lecture with a contemplatively look

philosophizing

walking from one side of the room to another gazing at the floor

man i loved that guy

i know this is petty and i try to be a descriptivist but ppl using portentous as a synonym for pretentious drives me crazy - not least bc i think a lot of ppl use portentous for pretentious reasons ("pretentious" being too common-use to appeal to them).

"adulting"

xp ?? do they in any sense mean the same thing? idgi

Mine: People saying 'mischievious'

not according to the OED they don't but ppl still (and i see this consistently) use portentous to mean pompous/grandiloquent etc. and smart ppl who should know better. which is why i don't think they're just confusing the two words - i think they really think portentous can be a more sophisticated way of saying pretentious.

I'd forgotten about it implying 'pompous' as always think of it as 'portending' something (thanks, English GCSE!) so... I guess? I do not like it though

It doesn't is what I'm saying. It's just about portent. But that's not how I see it used

yeah there's probably a technical word for this - a word gradually acquires a new usage because it happens to sound similar to a word with a different meaning

at some point with enough usage then the new "meaning" becomes legitimate i guess, i.e. dictionaries will give it, however rooted in straight wrongness this process is

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-jej1.htm

this piece about "jejune" is a little dry (ironically) but it details an instance of a similar process

It's the same confusion people show when using "reticent" versus "reluctant."

yes - and in both cases you can kinda understand why the slip is happening beyond just the words sounding similar. something being portentous - full of mystery and foreboding - could kind of strike one as pretentious. being inhibited or reserved is a kind of reluctance - to speak. but what really bothers me about portentous and pretentious is that it's confused by ppl who really should know better - ppl who do know the word pretentious but choose not to use it in favor of a different word that means something else entirely.

i usually look askance at people using "pretentious" as an insult anyway so

yes it does seem vaguely anti-intellectual which is maybe another reason pseudos try to replace it w/ portentous which sounds like it may carry a more neutral tone?

at some point with enough usage then the new "meaning" becomes legitimate i guess, i.e. dictionaries will give it, however rooted in straight wrongness this process is

it looks like this has already happened, if I put "portentous definition" into google then it gives me the following:

adjective
- of or like a portent; of momentous significance.
"this portentous year in Canadian history"
synonyms: ominous, warning, foreshadowing, predictive, premonitory, prognosticatory, momentous, fateful; More

- done in a pompously or overly solemn manner so as to impress.
"the author's portentous moralizings"
synonyms: pompous, bombastic, self-important, pontifical, ponderous, solemn, sonorous, grandiloquent, declamatory, overblown, overripe, inflated, rhetorical, oratorical
"Dr Chen muttered some portentous dialogue"

NV: catachresis?

Feel like the AP has just given up lately.

http://i.imgur.com/DA7yQEC.jpg?1

Puffin - yeah i guess so altho i don't think catachresis covers the "word ends up acquiring its misuse as a new valid definition" element

That waitlist (n) wait-list (v) kind of thing doesn't bother me at all.

Lots of compounds do similar costume changes when used in different ways. Mostly they tend to close over time, but they do so by degrees.

Compare: "She owns a small business." Noun. Vs. "She is a small-business owner." Compound modifier. Hyphenated to avoid potential ambiguity over whether she's small or the business is small.

Is there ambiguity introduced by wait list vs. waitlist vs. wait-list? No, not really, but it isn't weird on its face to have the noun close faster than the verb.

Ugh, so glad wait list and wait-list haven't made it across the Atlantic yet. Give it time though.

I'm very annoyed by people who mis-pronouce things in a jokey way too often, and then begin insisting that their pronunciation is correct and is the one you must use in their earshot.

Person a: Have you seen this bio-pic? (pronounces bio-pic as a normal human would)
Person b: You mean a biopic? (pronounces it like a piece of medical equipment)

This also goes for people who say Spiderman the way one would say Lieberman. It may have been funny once.

what kind of people do you hang out with

lol

I said "biopic" once in high school and a kid said "bio-pic? I think you mean biopic [to rhyme with myopic]" I wonder whatever happened to him

eaten by a lion

one of my colleagues just now on the telephone said he'd go through something with a "tooth comb" perhaps a slip of the tongue but just as likely that he thinks a there is a thing called a "tooth comb"

replacing flossing iirc

My friend told me someone he knew was "Vapor acted" the other day

eaten by a lion

always pronounced it "lee-on" and didn't understand the warning shout

also people who pronounce Sci-fi as "Siffy"

i say "ess eff" cos i know some SF nerds who get really pissy about "Sy Fy"

i watched one of those cheesy in-class movies in Biology once in high school where the dude kept referring to the element as "al-yoo-min-ee-um" and laughed at him only to realize years later that we in North America are the only idiots who say it/spell it "aluminum"

i know! i seem to recall reading a long time ago that your pronunciation is older/more etymologically established tho

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

there you go, U-S-A, U-S-A

but then weirdly i guess Americans don't use "calcum" or "potassum" or etc

I'm not a fan of wait-list being a verb in the first place.

"Placed on the wait list" is fine. Why is anyone in such a hurry, since we're already literally talking about WAITING?

Also I have seen SciFi (the cable TV channel) jocularly spelled as if it were pronounced "Skiffy." (On Facebook, so, take that for what it's worth.)

They changed their name to SyFy which is like... so much worse than "skiffy" jokes

when I worked in a call centre it seemed like the majority of customers over the age of, say, 60 pronounced WiFi as "wiffy" - it didn't annoy me, though

but it was weird when they pronounced "spiffy" as 'spy-fy'

I know a person from the Netherlands who says wifi as "veefee," which is correct for many Yurpean languages, and I actually find it kinda charming. I don't do this myself in USian contexts, as I do not enjoy getting punched in the mouth

I've heard it pronounced "weefy" across Central and South America.

ya wifi is pronounced weefee in a lot of places which is cool

in south america i've heard it pronounced interneto which is awesome

interneato