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

Habsburgs should limit their twitter presence to telling James Morrison's wife that he should be allowed to buy more Hungarian books.

why do americans say (for inst) "i didn't have that good of a time" instead of just "i didn't have that good a time", is that considered correct grammar even over there

you might also ask why English speakers throw in that meaningless "do" everywhere

archduke eduard of austria sez:
🐦[Are y’all beginning your novena for the Pope’s consacration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25?
— Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) March 16, 2022🕸]🐦

lol

"Pick a Protein"

"you might also ask why English speakers throw in that meaningless "do" everywhere"

huh? which meaningless DO, can you give an example?

huh? which meaningless DO, can you give an example?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support

meaningless English do: 'could do', 'should do', 'might do' etc

e.g. should we go to the beach? yeah, we could do or did nigel pack the towels? he should have done'

similarly, the unnecessary British English 'on': 'a lampshade with tassels on', 'a notebook with stickers on'

my engish teacher stepmom used to rant about these ones... rather than just "these"

The do I'm referring to:

I know.
I do not know.

I have a record.
Do I have a record?

Anyone who asks why dialect X uses "superfluous" construction Y should first ask themselves why semantically empty words are part of English's core syntax, and what that says about the actual value of brevity or efficiency in human language.

sure yeah ok but that otiose "do" at least makes grammatical sense

the "of" in "not that big of a deal" does not

it's a back-formation from the way you'd use "much" i guess

The cost of living is such a depressing phrase

— Lucy Prebble (@lucyprebblish) March 23, 2022

"snarky" is one i do not like

pretty good to get kicked off facebook 'cause now i see way less of internet arguers' stock riffs like "i'll just leave this here", "nice try", "living rent free in your head", "snowflake", "butthurt", etc etc

i could make a big long list but why make yourself sick

‘Do keep up’

ah yeah that one should earn an instant electric shock to the nutsack

"Grifter" was a term I'd only really come across in the UK in connection with that Stephen Frears movie, where it meant a con artist (iirc - haven't seen it for 30 yrs). So many people passionately, selfrighteously using this word that wasn't even in their vocabularly three years ago. Everyone loves something new to accuse people of.

possible reasons why an easy-to-spit US term for confidence trickster that's more than a century old recently became useful and thus used 🤔🤔🤔

Of course, but I find it interesting how quickly these things gain currency

^^ Yes! Most of the words/phrases in this thread don't actually annoy the shit out of me, I just find it interesting how word uses change and weird phrases become memetic

Having said that, the same colleague who

regularly 'pings' emails and refers to rough drafts as a 'starter for ten'

asked me earlier if we could 'grab 30 minutes to do a page turner' on a report, and I was definitely annoyed

(apparently it means 'to go through the report', which, why not just say that?)

i have accepted that a powerpoint presentation is often called a "slide deck" or a "deck" ... but I still don't understand why it is called a "deck," as opposed to a "stack" or something else.

is this gonna turn out to be something like the Hellman's/Best Foods issue, where there is some other region where "slides" are called "cards" and thus the "deck" usage made sense and that just transferred to the other regions where they called them slides?

the meeting I'm in right now ... "as you know, that will be a light-touch kind of pilot"

my co-worker has been using "cashflow" as a verb for the past two weeks ... I will not die on the hill of this being annoying, because I know what he means by it ... just, idk ... it makes me wonder what nouns can't be turned into verbs

He verbed the hell outta that noun.

Verbing weirds language

(Which is why it’s good)

"sat down with"

and that's okay!

and here's why!

"imposter syndrome"

so eye-rolley imo

"This [mildly diverting or pleasing image] is EVERYTHING."

“How’s it going?”
“It’s going”

Errrgh
It’s like the new “it is what it is”

“chef’s kiss”

“give me your download on trey lance”

"imposter syndrome"

so eye-rolley imo

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Thursday, April 7, 2022 3:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"I have imposter syndrome" is the new "I am an introvert"

"please give me attention as I pretend to not want attention."

could see someone writing a thinkpiece about how all adults think they have impostor syndrome while all kids think everyone is sus (i.e. a potential impostor). y'know, "We Have Met the Enemy and He is Sus: How the internet turned us all into impostors," sort of thing.

"influencer" has been bugging lately - I guess because it just fell out of the sky, like fucking Isaac Newton or Rona Barrett were 'influencers' but they didn't call themselves that

A student told me the other day that teachers are influencers. She meant it in a good way.

“pivot”

I keep saying this, should I cut my tongue out

"too funny"

Particularly people that overuse the phrase and almost exclusively use it in response to something that isn't humorous in least, e.g. "Oh Mary brought in cupcakes today? Too funny!"

Not necessarily annoyed but definitely fascinated by people (mid 30s and younger) writing 'loveeeee', 'vibeeeee' and similar as opposed to repeating the first vowel for prolonged emphasis

"We Have Met the Enemy and He is Sus: How the internet turned us all into impostors," sort of thing.

― Lily Dale, Thursday, April 7, 2022 4:10 PM (two days ago)

you win today's made-up clickbait title that will eventually become a clickbait title award

I feel like "creatives" is seen as less icky by younger people, whereas for me it feels corporate and like a gross capitalistic appropriation of artists. I think there are some younger people that say creatives as shorthand for "people who do creative work in or around the arts" ... but from a more populistic attitude where art is more rarefied and potentially capitalistic? idk ... i heard this younger activist say it unironically in a positive way, and I was ... very confused ...

my current actually annoyance is with "babies" ... like not referring to infants of any species ... like some variant of "babes" as in "attractive people" ? i honestly am curious where this came from. And another annoying use of "babies" is when it used to refer to children that are past puberty and well into their teens, most recently I saw it as part of a grassroots social media campaign to prevent the local school district from closing a handful of schools that had too few students enrolled to merit retaining the building. And the protesters were arguing "how dare they do this to our babies?" ... and I felt like, do you have to infantilize teenage kids in order to assert their value and how the closures disadvantage them? They are not babies AND they would probably benefit more from still being able to attend a school in their neighborhood than having to arrange for transportation to go across town.

also babies don’t go to school

re: 'creatives', this one is super common in my industry among people of all ages across the board it seems: actual people working in creative areas, people managing specialist workspaces for 'creatives', developers, local govt...

At my late 90s dot com job we had the “suit room”, the “geek room”, and the other room, with the designers and illustrator and writer that didn’t have a succinct name and were much more alike than different. We ended up calling it the “zoo room” for whatever reason.

It makes me cringe and I hope I never have to speak it out loud but “creatives” really does fit a niche and I can’t think of a better alternative for my list of job description shorthand terms.

i honestly am curious where this came from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWSVtnG2LEU