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

(as opposed to a local pandemic)

I said that to someone at work but then, annoyingly, I found that dictionaries allow for a pandemic that's not global. Eg, this from Collins:

A pandemic is an occurrence of a disease that affects many people over a very wide area.

I'm not over "learning" yet

Can they not just say "lesson"?

It's a good quick way of letting me know that you're a knob tho

"global pandemic"

― davey, Tuesday, August 25, 2020 11:25 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

(as opposed to a local pandemic)

― davey, Tuesday, August 25, 2020 11:25 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The redundancy had never occurred to me but now it will irk me every time I hear it :(

it's worse than walkathon. the first marathon wasn't a runathon! an escapade isn't a type of capade!

still annoyed

stannoyed!

gonna have a danceathon to raise awareness

I thought 'harbl' was a garbled portmanteau of 'hairy balls'?

it's how cats used to talk in 2006 or so when i made this stusername (that means "stupid username")

'terribad' is terribad.

nobody better complain about amazeballs

'amazeballs' is amazeballs.

I'm also vaguely ok with 'automagically'.

AWESOMESAUCE!!!!

they have a nice, Nickelodeon after-school vibe

my pupper is amazeballs 10/10 would recommend

idk, is Ice Capade a portmanteau? Sounds like a type of capade to me.

it's just a bad pun

although I think Ford called the Escape they produced in South America in the 90s a Capade because the Ice Capades threatened them with trademark infringement due to how Spanish speakers pronounced Escape

a shitmanteau

capade is what they call an unmanteau

a suckformation, to use the linguistic term

a shitmanteau should be the poop shelves they allegedly have in german toilets

Is 'portmanteau' a timid portmanteau of 'porte-manteau' or a coat you wear when drinking port in a port?

Lewis Carroll coined the English usage

A poormanteau is a two-word graft that doesn’t quite work.

Should've gone with bearmantle. Clearly a missed opportunity.

xp

Good morning everyone except people that ask "how are we?"

maybe they are avid fans of Ayn Rand's Anthem

*checks notes*

So what did they say?

"sir, this is a wendy's"

twitter memes are a lot like those terrible summer camp "inside jokes" that circulate, where you can be "funny" by just repeating a reference to something without actually making a joke. At least those are among friends with shared experiences though. Twitter memes enable completely unfunny people to be "funny" all the time, and also enable those same people to completely choke the life out of any tweet that actually is funny or incisive.

the rhetorical "right?" at the end of a sentence. you get this a lot in TED talks, podcast interviews with an "expert"

Should be systematically swapped for 'eh? EH???'

'right' in that way - absolutely disgraceful imo

depends if it's pronounced "ray-eet??" or "roight."

'eh?': the Canadian mechanism of subliminal coercion

i have a family member (in-lawish) who when peeved and mansplainy ends every sentence with an uptick "yes?" -- which is the most would-be controlling verbal device i think i've ever encountered

(tbf it doesn't really work: the actual consequence is that as a way of coping with this none of the rest of his family ever listen to one another or anyone else, and nor does he -- tho the non-listening very much worsens his peevishness lol)

this phenomenon is no better and no worse than any other on this thread of course -- i.e. it's fine and amuses me more than it annoys me -- but i'm adding it to the data why bcz it look intersting

...yes?

'so, here's what happens, right. the first thing this species of bee does when it encounters a chlorine molecule is it begins buzzing in the opposite rhythm that it began with, right.'

I have adapted per Tom Scharpling the habit of mock-intoning "right?" after singing the lines/melody/guitar riff of a song :/

This scene always gets me. Discover it again for the first time. So beautiful. pic.twitter.com/sCrM9rfn2V

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) September 9, 2020

Millennials got the bulk memo on the word 'aesthetic'.

it's of upmost importance

I really don't get why 'unhoused' is supposed to be preferable to 'homeless' among the wokest of the woke. The latter is only a pejorative term if you want it to be – and why would you? If my aim were to be a nit-picky prick about 'unhoused', I could just as easily argue that 'those people' simply don't want to be housed or some other heinous bullshit. Whereas 'homeless' clearly means: they are bereft of a 'home' in the common sense of the word, which is fucking tragic enough. I guess you could counter that interpretation with 'they do, in fact, have a home!' (cue Tom Waits singing 'Anywhere I Lay My Head'), but that's just euphemistic wishful thinking imo, and ultimately counterproductive. I guess the best thing I can say about 'unhoused' is that it draws more attention to itself than the more familiar 'homeless', and thus – if I'm being optimistic – to the issue it seeks to name as well.

I find myself doing the rhetorical "right" sometimes and I think it's a reflexive reaction to not having an actual back-and-forth with your audience or way to check in that they understand. I think it tends to mark moments where you need your audience to be on board w/your premise before you continue, so you instinctively ask them for confirmation even though they can't respond.

Sorry that was an xpost

Or maybe I just used xpost wrong, pre-coffee. Anyway, responding to something upthread.

The latter is only a pejorative term if you want it to be – and why would you?

It's a hobby for many.