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

smashed my gym goals, workout buddy, car into a stop sign on the way home

"Smashed it" annoys but not "crushed it"? Has "crushed" made it to the acceptably ironic phase?

cremated it

I think actual conversation has the advantage of a blow-softening ephemerality that social media posts definitively lack

if anyone said "spot on" to me in conversation i'd jab my finger in their eye

I also think LL raises a good point, to some extent the nucleus of any social media post is a brag.

my maxim is that ppl go onto social media to boast or complain (hi haters)

social media has always felt to me like answering a question that no one asked, providing more or less unsolicited information.

How about the overuse of "prior" and "prior to" when "before" works fine?

(xpost)
I also like how often slang that has jokey origins so predictably gets stripped of all irony when it passes from an insider group into wider usage. I believe this happened somewhat with "rockist". The most striking recent instance, which you could trace practically in real time, was "Like a Boss". (Granted, SNL is hardly confined to insiders.) Within months of the video showing Andy Samberg doing decidedly non-bosslike stuff, it had passed from mildly self-deprecating popular use to straight up bragging.

^I guess Slim Thug coming first undermines that example, but the pattern stands.

"nailed it" and "spot on" are both v useful early warnings of writing that's bad and you are better off not reading it

i love "nailed it," i used it twice yesterday

would never describe anything as "brilliant" that wasn't light-based tbf

Specifying one's age before posting to this thread should be mandatory.

'Nailed it' is fine (34).

To me, "Nailed it" has gone from totally unremarkable to kind of annoying.

oh what a coincidence, "to me" really annoys me

I'm still unaccustomed to the overuse of 'brilliant' in the UK.

How about the overuse of "prior" and "prior to" when "before" works fine?

a colleague does this; see also 'within' rather than 'in' and unnecessary use of 'in order to'

not sure I ever use "brilliant" un-sarcastically

last used last night as my train was cancelled due to flooding

I'm guilty of using 'prior to' and 'in order to'. Might be a holdover from French ('avant de', 'afin de') and Romanian ('înainte de', 'pentru a').

Prior to when? Prior to that point in time.

https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/fast-show.jpg

When students use the phrase, at least I get it: word count requirements. For example: "Prior to lunch, I went to the gym."

Consonance is occasionally a factor.

tbh my attitude to most stuff in this thread is: go for it! not only don't get OFF my lawn, get ON it! my generation left yours an utterly fucked world, even if most of us don't acknowledge this yet, and i'd rather spend time being charmed by the babble of the invention of new silly habits than aggrieved that it's no longer something i get to do

― mark s, Thursday, January 18, 2018 1:03 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the problem with "nailed it" and "spot on" in my experience is less to do with age than with judgment: the people who use it are always wrong, and what they're pointing at excitedly is always bad not good

Besides, doesn't "nailed it" carry unsavory associations in this Me Too era?

I disapprove of this slangy use of "went" as the past tense of "go", tell your students they should be using "yode"

there's nothing wrong with disliking some innovations in language (or even some older parts of language) and if enough ppl dislike them they probably won't have staying power. acknowledging that language is an evolving thing and that there isn't an abstract or platonic right way to speak it doesn't preclude finding certain innovations in it clumsy, redundant, obscuring meaning, trite, vapid, etc.

Maybe but then why is this thread so unrelentingly bad

level 1. SAE the way i was taught in school (or by my grammatically anal retentive parent) is the correct way to speak and write and people who stray from this are monsters
level 2. any way ppl want to speak and write is fine bc language evolves and we should be descriptivists and ppl who criticize are monsters
level 3. lots of ppl use language in stupid + clumsy ways often cribbing cliches that they learnt yesterday on twitter/in the boardroom nonetheless we should always be open to creative + novel uses of language bc it can enrich our lives

put some exploding brain meme pic next to each of those or something

this thread is bad for the same reasons ilx is bad would be my guess

ILX is brimming with journalists, copy editors, teachers and the like.

Because there are as many Englishes as there are English speakers, and while some defer even their own native speaker intuition to Standard English(es), as I noted earlier we don't have as much control over language as we think we do - there is a part of you that hates certain novel language features, but there is another part of you, call it your animal language, that eats that shit up because it is wired that way. That conflict won't go away, and being both literate and Internet-saavy will make it worse.

The rest are closet classicists.

xp

I just want to congratulate the whole web team, we set some very ambitious targets for last quarter and all of us, everybody who worked late nights during the launch -- and Rich of course -- we really smanged those goals. Thanks, guys.

I avoid these uncomfortable work exchanges by never accomplishing anything

lmao mick

this thread is bad for the same reasons ilx is bad would be my guess

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 1:40 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when one reads ilx all day the typical ilx-isms like "imo" "iirc" "otm" "bad not good" "that's my Raggett" "thanking you" etc. all kind of get old/annoying after awhile

"bad not good"

hm

ilx isn't so bad, this other forum i frequent, it's like 'fighting to preserve white identity' this 'fighting to preserve white identity' that, every 2 seconds. we get it, enough already!

maybe it's time you stepped up and told them you're sick of them being so repetitive. they may even thank you for letting them know and apologize. after all, online relationships can't flourish without a willingness to be honest.

'smashed my gym goals'

Seriously?

Yes, seriously, but this is from a very lovely gentle person who isn't showing off in this case as it's related to a physical problem - it's not so much the 'showing off' element but the 'smashed'. I just hate it.
"Crushed it" I associate with Rebel Wilson that is not a fat joke

The rest are closet classicists.

Closecists.

"your biases are showing"

Solecists.

xp

'I'm not crying, you're crying.'

that should be the title for this thread

'I'm not crying, you're crying.'
ugh i will join in on this one
what a scourge
i'm not crying and if i were i would not be posting about it on the internet

starting to be annoyed by all words & phrases

Language is bad not good.

irritability/crankiness and anger can be a manifestation of depression