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

"We're pregnant" is worse

No, you idiot,

she

"we've fallen pregnant" i think is ok

our bun's fallen into the oven

Great news, we're up the duff.

(week-old xposts) a v occasional and tangential part of my job involves writing emails which go "dear x, as an alumn__ of the University of y you are eligible for..." and the alumnus/-a/-i thing bothers me a lot; picking the right ending can seem too fussy, and alas "alum" seems oldfashioned, but it does bother me seeing "alumni" used in the singular

I think I go with -us as a general singular regardless of gender but sooner or later a classicist/pedant is going to be mad at being misgendered

(but I'm not sure I'd particularly appreciate feeling like someone had taken the time and conscious deliberation to assign me the correct feminine ending either? and then there's the risk of guessing wrong)

alumna is the correct neuter plural ending, use that if you want to rile literally everyone

side note: I'm sure I saw a linguistics paper once that said (though the details were way beyond my understanding) that it's no coincidence that Latin and Greek feminine forms, and perhaps other languages too, resemble neuter plurals - but last time I went looking for this theory I couldn't find anything, probably because I don't know any of the relevant words to search for

so if anyone has any idea what I might be talking about please do let me know, esp if you can find a dumbed-down version of the hypothesis suitable for non-book-learnin' morons (mora!) like myself

I say bring back the "Dual" of early & Attic Greek and possibly v. early Latin too: a special ending required for if I have to email exactly two alums at once

haven't noticed that yet, but have noticed people pronouncing tenets "tenants."

I've been seeing/hearing this a lot lately and find it vaguely annoying

also, increasingly seeing "slither" used for, I guess, "sliver" - "a little slither of cake" etc - this bothers me for some reason

People who say ‘the floor’ when they are talking about/should say ‘the ground’. Cretins.

slither for sliver
and phased for fazed
annoy the hell out of me

and I'll just say it again: michievious for mischievous

i have started considering the floor-ground thing bcz it so reliably enrages suzy

As Boaby would say, the flerr/grun hing.

Is this in a gardening context?

‘Forest floor’ is the only acceptable use of ‘floor’ outdoors that I can think of right now. All it takes is a particularly thick police officer talking about someone falling on the floor when it would be accurate to say ground, pavement or road to set me off.

I mean, say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

feel bad about where i dropped those babbies now :(

Just use deck instead.

This bad thread is never worse than when it is just listing every meme, but

“____ can have a little ____, as a treat”

is annoying cause the original image said “cats can have little a salami” and these things matter

"‘Forest floor’ is the only acceptable use of ‘floor’ outdoors that I can think of right now."

How about "ocean floor"?

'sleeps' as a noun has been mentioned, but it's still like #1 THE WORST

I say bring back the "Dual" of early & Attic Greek and possibly v. early Latin too: a special ending required for if I have to email exactly two alums at once

Old English had dual forms of 1st and 2nd person pronouns, but they disappeared by the 1300s:

wit "we two"
git "us two"
unc "you two"
inc "you two" (accusative)

Had a neuter third person, too (hit).

tbf i use all those words except unc, which my niece uses of me

Just saying there's an opening for "yeet" as the first-person dual pronoun in Modern English

a few years i jokingly suggested alumnx as a solution to this problem.

since then i’ve become aware that at least one college has started doing so

xp

you can just call them "wallets"

"Fixed your headline for ya"

i have started considering the floor-ground thing bcz it so reliably enrages suzy

Fuck that. Ground is floor. Apartment is house.

-dead prez

blame willie dixon

the word "aesthetic" being overused as an adjective, i.e. "that's so aesthetic"

really, when it's used to describe anything, without being used as a prefix

Haven't encountered that... till now.

Just saying there's an opening for "yeet" as the first-person dual pronoun in Modern English

The kids are using 'yeet' as a verb, meaning to lob or chuck something. 'What happened to my pen? I yeeted it out the window' etc.

recent reddit joek: "What's the difference between a baked sweet potato and a flying pig?"

"One's a heated yam. The other is a yeeted ham."

This morning, within a few minutes of each other, I saw an ad for pork chops that claimed they were "raised thoughtfully" and a label on a jar of instant coffee claiming it was "grown respectfully". These are not so much annoying as deeply bogus. These feeble attempts feel even more bogus than good old 'nongredients', where marketers label a bag of sugar as having "No Trans Fats!".

really, really tired of "circular firing squad"

yeet is an excellent word and should not be being dangled into this often silly thread

"grown thoughtfully; slaughtered gleefully"

While paying a bill just now: "Please complete this challenge to prove you are a real person:"
Then I clicked the "I am not a robot" button.
Conclusion: just because you do something, it doesn't make it a "challenge". Especially posting a photo of yourself to Facebook or whatever.
*grumble*

it's a "challenge" in the sense of "Halt! Who goes there?"

yeah, challenge/response is online security jargon... I'd nix it in customer-facing stuff though, just use "verify"

it's challenging for many of us to prove our innate humanity in this rapidly digitized world

my phone has a small membrane I have to cry a single tear on sometimes

This bad thread is never worse than when it is just listing every meme, but

“____ can have a little ____, as a treat”

is annoying cause the original image said “cats can have little a salami” and these things matter

― Last night I dreamt I watched The Mandalorian (wins), Sunday, February 16, 2020 8:01 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

the wrongness of this post has been bothering me for a week... a) it's only one version out of dozens that was worded like that, and b) the humor of the meme isn't 'hey internet, remember how dogs have their own funny way of speaking, well so do cats and hold onto your butts bc it's even more grammatically incorrect!', the humor is that it's a cat assuring you that yes, it's ok to give cats salami, but only a little bit, you know, as a treat

this is not in reference to anything specific -- because it's too widespread to do that -- but the increased use of "grift" to mean "thing I dislike," much like how "trolling" is now completely detached from its original meaning -- is irritating as all hell. unless someone is deliberately scamming, they are not a grifter! things can be bad without being that!

in particular, if someone is a true believer in whatever it is they are doing, that isn't grift (nor trolling), they just believe something that is bad

wins is (as usual, bcz he's funny ) entirely correct and esby is (as always, bcz never funny) completely wrong