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

I hate hate hate that I have adopted irl the phrase "hill to die on" and plan to stop

I guess some of these irk more than others. Really happy "dumpster fire" and "stinkin'" (as in "so stinkin' cute") seem to have fallen out of fashion. Also people on social media demanding I let things sink in.

when do these things come back around and become ironic? Because I can't wait to tell someone born in 2010 to talk to the hand

^ scheming

total self-own here but i keep using the word "inexorable" recently and it sounds really pretentious but it's just such a perfect word to describe some things

also was it this thread where we were discussing calling an amount of money "cool" or was that just a conversation i had in my head? there are very few of these phrases that actually annoy me because words is words but "made a cool million dollars this year" drives me up the wall. it seems like every blog that has to describe a salary or a windfall or whatever uses "cool" and it's like, but, you know you could have just not written that word right? it serves no function?

"beautiful / wonderful / awesome human" instead of "person" makes me twitch every time.

“awesome” makes me twitch regardless because it’s vastly overused

there are very few of these phrases that actually annoy me because words is words but "made a cool million dollars this year" drives me up the wall.

one of the harry potter books (the biggest one?) has all the characters saying things “coolly” about 600 times

Haha, someone ran a count. 59 times across all the novels.

https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/66dz7t/i_looked_at_the_frequency_of_word_pairs/dgi5qfg/

jeez

coolly high hermione

✓

lol

i'm reading these fucking books with my kids and there is no way [redacted] NO WAY

ah fuck i’m not up to that bit yet

lol sorry it might just be a fake-out i dunno. i will get a mod to remove in case it's real??

Tracer's reading slash to his kids

I was wondering why my copy was just a sheaf of papers printed out in a dot matrix monotype font

fucking “pooch”, fuck that word to hell, it makes me gag

pooch out

*snigger*

Companion for my recent whining about "deep cuts": "deep dive." "Detailed," "thorough," "exhaustive," these are perfectly descriptive words. I may throw it when I write my last set of report cards, though: "Johnny took a deep dive into pulleys and gears for his science project, and I haven't seen him since."

"Deeply" has been pretty bad for a while, as in "Deeply disturbing." Agree with all the above, clemenza. "Deep cut" is a little different, since it's been around for a while, whereas "Deep dive" seems invented out of whole cloth all of a sudden. but I had to catch myself from referring to an obscure movie as a "Billy Wilder deep cut" the other day. going on about Stereolab or whoever "deep cuts" isn't noxious to me.

I had to catch myself from referring to an obscure movie as a "Billy Wilder deep cut"

what did you say instead?

I'm going to just start referring to things as "lesser-discussed works"

Still better than 'neglectorinos'.

haha I think "an obscure Billy Wilder movie"

Watched a Wilder I'd never heard of last night; looked it up later & found it had four Oscar noms.

The Fortune Cookie?

yah

Judging from its appearance several times recently on ILX, "at this point in time" seems to be making a comeback. It shouldn't. It's just a pompous way of say "now" or "at present". Ditto for substituting "at that point in time" for a simple "then". These abominations gained a foothold in the public psyche during the Watergate hearings, when members of the Nixon administration used them constantly during their testimony.

My dad always used to blow his top when he heard "at this moment in time".

mine would for 'rate of speed'

That’s me and ‘as yet’.

“At this point in time” is the kind of dumb bullshit cops say

"the individual exited the vehicle..."

as of the present point in time

came across "at a more rapid rate" in print today

in most cases you don't need "then" or soon" in sentences or, fuck, "going forward." The verb tense indicates when the action takes place.

fuck a “going forward”

Much of this stuff consists of the bad or sloppy habits we pick up from the various influences that always float around us, but even if these constructions are technically forgivable, the basic message should be "Resist!"

at work, I usually write every email by writing what comes into my head, spending a second draft revising and usually overcompensating by bloating up the thing, then pausing, re-reading it, and stripping every fucking unnecessary word, phrase or modifier out of the thing , and it usually shrinks by 33%.

“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree”
WHAT ?

lol

Biopic doesn't rhyme with myopic, ppl.

It's "BUY oh PICK." Just like if you said "bio" and then "pic" right afterwards.

Not "by YOP ick".

Please.

This has been well-covered

also it's funny to say it wrong

Increasingly bugged by people increasingly prefacing all requests and demands with "I need you to" or (a million times worse) "I'm gonna need you to"

IS there a way to issue commands like this that doesn't rankle tho?

the very worst is obviously "how busy are you right now?"

but there's a whole spectrum of badness.. "if you could (x) that would be graaaaaaate"

Good old "Can you clean the bathrooms before you leave today?" or "Please clean the bathrooms before you leave today" do not rankle. "Make sure to" is okay. "It's your day to clean the bathrooms." "The bathrooms need cleaning; do it before you leave."

Directness is a virtue.

"If you get a chance, can yo wipe the toilet clean with your tongue? Only if you can. Thanks!!! xoxo"