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

playing literati with challenge mode set where,if the opponent challenges the word and the word is valid, they lose a turn is fun.

people too afraid to challenge "gambanans" and "buttafuocous"

Things can be true

Irregardless can be a meaning-recognized word while also being used dreadfully and wrongly when the actual word regardless exists

Not a hill to die on either way but the gatekeeping protestation aint the one here for me

people don't like irregardless but are fine with unravel, it's just obnoxious to make such inconsistent appeals to logic in language usage

Some sins are worse than others!

there's no such thing as sin

Now we're getting somewhere

Yes, but there is syntax

vg

that's semantics

sometimes you need an extra syllable imo

(pvmic)

He said, dropping three syllables

Some flapdoodle right there

sometimes!

"Off-ramp," as in "McConnell needed an off-ramp." There's nothing inherently bad about it, I just hate anything when everybody starts saying it all of a sudden. (I liked the off-ramp they took in The Godfather: "We goin' to Jersey?")

"It's ______________'s party now." Marjorie Taylor Greene's. Josh Hawley's. Lionel Hutz's. Whatever.

But it can only be Lesley Gore's party. That's it.

The Chiffons recorded the republican party first.

"this human"
Random IG post: Had the best takeout cocktails with this human

Acceptable if the speaker is from another species, imo.

The baboon/human divide is real

acceptable if the activity in question is something one commonly does with a non-human: e.g. had a chill trip to the vet with this human or had to get up early to take this human outside to pee

Maybe one for the co-workers thread, but:

A colleague who regularly 'pings' emails and refers to rough drafts a 'starter for ten' has just used the phrase 'long-term quarterbacking of delivery strategy' in a presentation.

I generally like this person but their jargon is unbearable.

do they also say things like

"now, this doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we want"

"although we believe this is how it will work, we are still massaging the details a bit"

"we have a lot of balls up in the air"

“Can you begin to socialise the details of this new process with your teams ?”

'starter for ten' is... horrifying

I would be too tempted to insert intentional malapropisms into my daily speech with them to see if they picked up on it

i don't even get 'starter for ten'

"Here's your starter for ten [points]" is how Jeremy Paxman introduces the first question in each batch of questions in University Challenge.

ahhhh gotcha, yeah that is 'burn with fire'

Probably an okay joke the first time someone thought of it. As jargon though...

I would be too tempted to insert intentional malapropisms into my daily speech with them to see if they picked up on it

― he said that you son of a bitch (Neanderthal), Monday, February 15, 2021 8:32 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

HAHAHAHA!

ctrl-f "meggings"

okay delete thread, start over

meggings for muggles ...

lol “starter for ten” is absolutely baked into my workplace to the point that few even see it as jargon.

Do they follow up with "no conferring"?

anytime someone answers a question in class and adds an ",Alex" at the end I kick them out of class

Maybe one for the co-workers thread, but:

A colleague who regularly 'pings' emails and refers to rough drafts a 'starter for ten' has just used the phrase 'long-term quarterbacking of delivery strategy' in a presentation.

I generally like this person but their jargon is unbearable.

Is this in the US? Who would 'get' starter for ten in the US?

It's in the UK, which makes the 'quarterbacking' thing even more baffling - nobody involved in the project is American.

do they also say things like

"now, this doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we want"
"although we believe this is how it will work, we are still massaging the details a bit"
"we have a lot of balls up in the air"

I think I've heard 'balls up in the air' but thankfully not the first two. Yet.

lol “starter for ten” is absolutely baked into my workplace to the point that few even see it as jargon.

my sincerest condolences

how about "teeing things up?" ... like

co-worker: we should tee up this new project
me: i don't really know much about golf?
co-worker: huh?
me: what does "tee up" actually mean?

we work for a non-profit that helps low-income people and artists -- why are we using golf metaphors?

lol ok I do that one now and then but only cos half the time I forget the word "staging"

at least you work for/with people who aspire to have the wealth and leisure time to play golf

"We should prime the canvas on this project."

staging is fine. most people know what that means.

If that is the measure then idk 95% of this thread is fine tbh

idk it's mostly contextual in terms of the inconsistency / disjunction between who is speaking and to whom and what the context is. If you are using language that because of the audience and/or context that is unclear or requires the audience to do extra cognitive steps that really shouldn't be required ... that is the majority of what annoys me. Cognitive steps in a "punching down" type of way that I feel is part of jargon's function -- like it connotes a professionalism and higher status than the average person.

teeing up can also refer to the rather more proletarian sport of tee-ball

Or maybe I'm just drinking my own bathwater here.

There are some sharks in the water but really this is the long pole in the tent

heh let me circle back to you on that in a while and i'll ping you when there's a deliverable

sarahell, just make sure we answer the mail

Theres little that teeing up does ito punching down to the uninformed that staging doesnt also do tbh