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

Four Words: Use Other Words Please
"Use other words please."
Commonly used phrases that inexplicably bug you
Most irritating cliche/phrase/expression
"Taking Things to a Whole `Nother Level!"
words that annoy
Words that should earn the author a slap
PROVERBIAL and other tip offs to poor writing

-- caitlin (wpsal...) (webmail), December 23rd, 2003. (caitlin)

Oh yes, yes yes. I second that one. And the people who say it, say it over and over.

I also have a horror of people who write prolifically in all caps.

This is true.

But, this is a topic that should be dealt with routinely and harshly... the only way we can correct the language and suppress it's organic growth is by exposing and banning every new usage as it occurs... Isn't that what the French do?

Also: 'fridge,' girls who refer to each other as 'girl,' proactive...i'll be back when i think of more....

'poetic justice'. Used by the lazy to describe all 'justice' the speaker approves of, instead of a particular type. The adjective is rendered meaningless.

Agree re 'bird' for woman/girl, and lament its threatened return. Stinks of 'I'm being un-PC, where's my medal?'. Also the C-person uses it, which kinda ends the argument.

Wait, huh? Fridge is the thing you put food in, whats wrong with it?

I'm picturing him saying things such as "Would you like me to remove another beverage from the refrigerator for you, whilst we watch some association football?"

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

wins being correct on a thread he (correctly) despises is also funny

all financial transactions under capitalism are grift btw

Wow seriously I don’t understand “X can have a little y, as a treat” because it’s not clever at all? What’s funny or clever about a treat? Idgi unless it’s like the Bloomberg-spaghetti face thing where it truly means nothing and you just have to subscribe to it being “funny” or be on the outside.

I think the last meme that made me laugh was the one of Leonardo DiCaprio doing a dog impression for Cillian Murphy and that must be almost a decade ago so I dunno.

Wow seriously I don’t understand “X can have a little y, as a treat” because it’s not clever at all? What’s funny or clever about a treat?

the typo is what was originally intended to be funny, especially as it suggested that a cat had written the article. (cats famously have an inexact grasp of English grammar.)

the subsequent memes are stating that other things can be a treat for various recipients, not that treats are inherently clever.


Bloomberg-spaghetti face

never encountered whatever this is btw!

Ok consider it clarified :) Still not very amusing but I’m not a cat person so it’s clearly not for me.

Re spaghetti — I heard there was a meme with Bloomberg’s face superimposed on a plate of spaghetti!? I heard this on NPR while driving through Iowa so I thought it was well known lol :)

Bloomberg’s face superimposed on a plate of spaghetti!?

I'd jam a fork into it.

cats famously have an inexact grasp of English grammar

This is one of those things that suffuses popular culture that I wish we had the temperament to examine critically.

Like, we can believe that pets read and write... but we always imagine that they don't do it very well. We anthropomorphize nonhuman animals' skills into a very specific range: just enough to be relatable and amusing, but not so much that they'd threaten our hegemony. So a dog can write CAT FUD, Toonces can drive but is terrible at it, a cat can write "cheezburger" but somehow not "cheeseburger."

There's the related phenomenon of deliberate misspelled words in specific online contexts (e.g. joek, borad, baout), but again there's a weirdly specific range where people think that's cute - short of which it's just wrong; past which it's just incomprehensible.

I vaguely recall that one proposed etymology for "OK" was a 19th-century fad for deliberate joke misspellings like "oll correct," which is basically doge / can haz avant la lettre.

very linguistics, wow

all financial transactions under capitalism are grift btw

― Dunty Reggae party 🎉 (Noodle Vague), Sunday, February 23, 2020 7:53 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

by this definition you are a grifter, as am I, as am virtually everyone in the country and possibly the world, which means that you are asserting that every single person in that category is deliberately out to scam others and truly believes in nothing

s/are, rewrote a few too many times

This is one of those things that suffuses popular culture that I wish we had the temperament to examine critically.

I know of at least one Ph.D. dissertation about lolcat, there are undoubtedly more now

but we always imagine that they don't do it very well.

In my experience, Gary Larson in The Far Side was the first place I saw this trend consistently illustrated. A much earlier counter-example would be Don Marquis, who wrote the Archy and Mehitabel vignettes. Archy the cockroach spelled exquisitely well, but couldn't capitalize, being too small to use the shift key.

he was exactly the right size and wisely chose not to

"cringe" again

Gary Larson in The Far Side

Yes CAT FUD is a classic Far Side reference and even non-Larson fans ime write it that way.

Like, I have had cats for 40+ years and I can't remember ever writing "cat food" on a shopping list. Cat fud or gtfo.

I really hate the use of equity as a replacement for equality. It seems that apparently they have different meanings, but not THAT different and maybe we could have just updated the meaning on the one word.

Saki’s Tobermory was very eloquent: I guess our estimation of cat’s intelligence has gone down over the last century.

Birds are sketchy on grammar and also full of themselves:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/269/929/cc9.jpg_large

borb

What everyone really needs to accept is that it’s horribly grating to hear anyone say anything that anyone else has ever said before

― devops mom (silby), Friday, July 6, 2018 6:18 PM (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Wednesday, December 12, 2018 9:41 AM (one year ago)

I was talking on Facebook about VP picks earlier tonight with a friend: "I'm not as deadset against Harris as I was, though still a bit worried about the whole stupid 'lanes' business."

"Lanes" is (are?) everywhere right now. The entire political spectrum has been transformed into a bowling alley.

Trying to tell my inner pedant to calm down when it sees 'epicentre' used re: this outbreak.

i'm not a prescriptivist and ppl using formulae i'm unused to is mostly more interested than annoying -- this thread is mainly bad not good -- but when ppl say "coronated" are they just jokingly avoiding saying "crowned"?

("coronated" is a term in zoology meaning "resembling a crown")

? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coronate

but fine I'll amend to ""looks like charles is finally getting his coronation after all"

i guess the dem primary just unleashed a whole bunch of it into my attention

Americans could have a slight reluctance to say "crowned" w/r/t politics, while "coronated" sounds more metaphorical, i.e., more distant from genuine monarchical practice? idk

whatever spell check my browser is running does not think "coronated" is a word btw

i'm not against it, just unused to it. it seems like needless duplication -- but maybe the avoidance of monarchical implication stops it being a duplication?

the more I think about it, the more it seems like a US/UK divide. When I think of "crowning" or "crowned" my first association is childbirth!

It make me think of Cornuts. I'm hungry.

My first association with "crowned" was with boxing champions.

as in "crowned champion" or as in "punched in the head"

the first. the second usage is becoming quite archaic.

lol my mum used to use the latter, but that largely confirms your judgment