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

People in song lyrics are always going into local bars.

I have observed in song lyrics that when there is a conflict between conforming to normal speech patterns and making a line more singable, the more singable version tends always to win out. As it should.

Local bar seems completely normal to me but I've known a lot of people for whom it was completely normal to travel 30 minutes to the bar they like vs. the nearest dive.

When did people start using “high-level” to describe a introductory overview.

my co-worker has used it for at least a couple years .... i use it ironically because of that, like "high-level, you need to get me your receipts if you want to get paid back"

Ending a sentence with a stray "...so..."

I keep waiting for the speaker to provide more detail

― Front-loaded albums are musical gerrymandering (Prefecture),

I like this usage. How to say "there's more to this -- we can go deeper or leave it there" in one syllable.

Pointlessly ornate British expressions such as 'indeed it is' instead of 'yes', or 'your good self' instead of 'you'. I'm sure it's all bound up in social class somehow, because how could it not be in this fucking country?

I think it's more tied up in the tradition of the great British twat.

The phrase "....on steroids."

it's like Uber... for steroids

... on steroids

Lately:
Utilize - is it different than “use”??
Comfortability, to mean “comfort”

I might actually be annoyed by “utilize” but I’m at least a little bit amused by “comfortability.” It’s silly but…padded like an oversized armchair. A comfortabil one.

'The ability to be comfortable' suggests that the subject of the sentence isn't, at this moment in time, actually comfortable.

I think there are slightly different connotations to utilise & use: make useful vs make use of

Complaints that it is a pointless fancying-up of a perfectly good word by fools trying to sound clever have been around forever (it is satirised in gaddis’s jr in 1975) but I reckon it’s fine

"Tiddies" is a twitter thing ime, often used by women? Might just be who I follow though. For me, I think the acceptability of this one depends on who's using it.

I always replace utilise with use when editing

Pointlessly ornate British expressions

and 'whilst' with 'while'

Pointlessly ornate British expressions such as 'indeed it is' instead of 'yes', or 'your good self' instead of 'you'. I'm sure it's all bound up in social class somehow, because how could it not be in this fucking country?

I think there are slightly different connotations to utilise & use: make useful vs make use of

^^ What I was taught. As in, "I utilized this fork to comb my hair." Students and administrators, though, like what they consider fancy-pants jargon.

I work in local government and business speak keeps creeping in: “deliverables”, a request is an “ask”, “elevator pitch”. I’m talking about a rezoning not trying to get a producer to read my script about a sassy robot.

one of my managers likes to edit my work into language adjacent to this ^ and i have a high level of comfortability utilizing the "reject" button

since i was very young i have hated abbreviations for things. i didn't know people called interrogatories "rogs" and "rogs" have been a big part of my life lately. i want to just tell them i don't like it. it doesn't sound cool. it's not hard to use the whole word. i've been trying just not to use any word. just working on "them."

looool harbl!

Asks and pitches are everywhere in my world, along with stakeholders. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow.

Boring Md., don't forget "guvna"

“Stakeholders” doesn’t bother me, it makes some sort of sense when you are trying to bring disparate groups and interests together to try to produce, for example, a small area plan. Also use of that phrase long predates my time. The language I roll my eyes at has crept in over the last decade.

here we occasionally show our true faith by calling students "customers"

Squire and guv I hear occasionally (rarely unselfconsciously). "Love" is standard everyday use.

A few minutes ago I was queuing in a shop and the woman at the till called her customer "love" and in his reply he called her "duck" (he was from Derbyshire, Im guessing by his accent + use of "duck").

We had a meeting last week where somebody had to bring in draft version of a website structure and they all called it the "straw man". Like, can you bring in the straw man into the meeting for us to discuss? So weird.

I don't mind business terms like "stakeholder" because, even if they're not the sort of word you'd use outside of work, at least they have a singular, useful, definable meaning. I don't like words like "deliverables" because they seem disingenuous to me. What "deliverables" means is "the things we have to produce", but calling those things "deliverables" makes it easier for people to forget that actual creative work needs to happen in order to produce them, and managers hate thinking about actual work, because they don't do any.

Also hate "I'm conscious of time" because (a) isn't everyone conscious of time? and (b) what it really means is "everyone shut the fuck up so I can leave this meeting"

(Also the implication is "I am conscious of time and you are not.")

"everyone shut the fuck up so I can leave this meeting"

That's pretty much what I'm thinking the whole time in every meeting.

here we occasionally show our true faith by calling students "customers"

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 15, 2022 9:41 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

As a therapist who has worked in a variety of different settings, it is always interesting to see where the culture is to refer to "patients" vs "clients" vs (the true faith revealer) "consumers."

Ooooh yes, the "I want to respect everyone's time..." word bubble!!! Although tbh it's often used half disingenuously to shut down someone who's rambling or monopolizing all the attention and needs to be stopped.

I work in local government and business speak keeps creeping in: “deliverables”, a request is an “ask”, “elevator pitch”. I’m talking about a rezoning not trying to get a producer to read my script about a sassy robot.

― Otto Insurance (Boring, Maryland)

like 95% of my work is with local government and I'm seeing more and more developer speak creeping in. Things like 'mobilising assets' (to mean making better use of buildings, like repurposing vacant space for start-ups), 'unlocking land' (usually to mean developing challenging sites), 'improving the offer' (to mean making the shopping, dining, public realm, etc in a place better). I get why all of these terms exist -- they encapsulate somewhat complex/long-winded ideas in short phrases -- but I have a feeling they're a bit impenetrable for laypeople, which isn't great for local govt publications and policies. idk, ilxors who don't work in urban development, what do you think?

Also hate "I'm conscious of time" because (a) isn't everyone conscious of time? and (b) what it really means is "everyone shut the fuck up so I can leave this meeting"

― Chuck_Tatum

ime this phrase is often followed by the person saying it going on to talk for way longer than necessary. I'm conscious of time, so I'm going to use the last few minutes to talk endlessly even though everyone wants to gtfo.

totally. "Is there anything left to discuss? No? Great! I just want to mention one more thing..." [monologues for twelve minutes]

xpost

I'm a trainee therapist myself - I've seen convincing cases for (and against) both client and patient, so I basically just go with the house rules. I prefer client because it respects a person as an active being, rather than someone "being treated", but obviously client is bad for other reasons... it feels like a very sausage-makers-only type of issue.

Yeah the associations with commerce and something being bought and paid for, are obv bad, but client has other meanings too. I think the commercial bit might have tarred it too much tho?

In terms of keeping people in a community all on an equal footing while doing aid/support/charity work, we've been saying "neighbors" instead of donor vs recipient language. It seems important.

A few minutes ago I was queuing in a shop and the woman at the till called her customer "love" and in his reply he called her "duck"

In Glasgow I still hear 'hen' used affectionately for women or girls most days.

'pet'

or 'petal' even

I really like “my lover” as an affectionate address to a stranger but you don’t hear that very often anymore, not even in the westcountry.

dr vick, plymothian-born, still uses it a lot

u will be pleased to hear

“elevator pitch”. I’m talking about a rezoning not trying to get a producer to read my script about a sassy robot.

thank you for helping me maintain my sanity here ... i was almost feeling like i needed to write a treatment about a sassy robot that saves the city from imminent destruction through removing confusing language from the municipal planning code and claim that i have contacts at Pixar

"I was today years old when I learned that..."

OH I'M A WIDDLE BABY USING CUTESY WOOTSY PHWASES

Yeah, that one really sucks but it seems to have died down, or at least I hope it has

How have I never opened this thread? I'm almost afraid to bookmark it out of concern for my blood pressure.

I listen to a fair amount of radio, mostly KCRW (LA-based NPR affiliate with assorted other music and talk programming). And I watch PBS Newshour lol (your mental picture of me is most likely entirely correct at this point).

Yeah, so I am finding that "Yeah, so" is frequently used to kick off the answer to an interview question. Happens a lot, right, and what also happens a lot is people inserting "right" into their answers as though looking for some sort of affirmation from me, who is sitting across the country from this person, right, alone in my car.

And yeah, so the problem is is that I am now employing these phrases in my own speech, right, and am thus annoying the shit out of myself.

I took a public speaking class in school once where if you said any of those place-holding type of words during a speech, all your classmates would shout the word back at you. I think that cured me of using any of those things forever.

My boss says "Yeah, no" every other word.. I'm told this is a California thing

Think there was an entire thread about "yeah no" wayyyy back

A few minutes ago I was queuing in a shop and the woman at the till called her customer "love" and in his reply he called her "duck" (he was from Derbyshire, Im guessing by his accent + use of "duck").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1BOBK8iBQU

My boss says "Yeah, no" every other word.. I'm told this is a California thing

― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, March 17, 2022 11:11 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Think there was an entire thread about "yeah no" wayyyy back

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Thursday, March 17, 2022 11:31 AM (two days ago)

I am from California and say this ... not every other word though.

And yeah, so the problem is is that I am now employing these phrases in my own speech, right, and am thus annoying the shit out of myself.

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Thursday, March 17, 2022 11:02 AM (two days ago)

Some of this has to do (i suspect) with the interview format, and potentially that the people speaking aren't in the same room.

So the "Yeah" functions to denote that the second person has heard and absorbed the first person's question.

The "so" functions as if part of the goal of the interview is to consistently fill time with information (or entertainment). Like they are taking turns telling a story. Except it isn't a story, it's a conversation, but imagine instead that these two people (interviewer and interviewee) are telling you the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Person 1: Goldilocks went to the first bed and it was too hard for her?

Person 2: Yeah, so then Goldilocks went to the second bed and it was too soft, right, and then Goldilocks went to the third bed, right, and it was exactly what she was looking for

The "right" is less about affirmation and more of a "I am assuming that you heard and understand what I just said, and now I am going to move on to the next step in my argument"

"executive visioning session"

I took a public speaking class in school once where if you said any of those place-holding type of words during a speech, all your classmates would shout the word back at you. I think that cured me of using any of those things forever.

This is a The Day Today sketch! Starting at 1:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rguQFPnPIYc