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

In the context of professional basketball, "length" refers to whether a player has longer arms than would be average for a person of their height. A common way to phrase this desirable abnormality would be to say, for example, that a 6' 10" player has the "wingspan" of someone 7' 2".

agreed but i personally hate referencing forwards/centers as 'bigs' even more

had a date this weekend and was asked "oh, so you like sportsball then?"

and put a foot out the door : /

I compiled these commandments for student writing, negotiable if they write sentences pleasurable in themselves and/or they prove their arguments.

Like "have a good one," calls to mind literal defecation

― mick signals, Wednesday, April 10, 2019 1:43 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I once worked with a guy who loathed this expression. I found this baffling because it seemed to me like such an inoffensive thing for a person to say. But now think I get it.

this doesn't really annoy me -- the noun is too weird a concept to normalise really -- but i just encountered "veritable cornucopia" in a manuscript i'm editing and it did make me myles-na-gCopaleen at it a bit

what nature does the cornucopia always share with la scission dans l'internationale (situationniste understood)

both are VERITABLE

What other generous quantity is veritable?
The plethora.

smorgasbord

feasts too

strunk and white advises that the editor substitute "motherfucking"

ha

as someone whose mood on any given day is almost entirely defecation-dependent "have a good one"'s applicability on this front is only one more argument in favor of its high seriousness

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5K2m8-XoAAYhX7.jpg

brb designing a metal teapot at the cum commune

the ultimate chaos didn't cum from the jizz flying everywhere in the trenches, it was having to gtfo nazi germany sharpish for most of 'em!

The New Yorker coining this phrase makes it ten times better.

"daddy?"

I compiled these commandments

Anyway, now that I've read then: well done.

KINDERGARTEN CUM COMMUNE

seriously

oh you mean you never got around to it. gotcha

tracer hand is a cop

What age are your students, Alfred? I'm going to use some of those with my Y11s (15/16 yr olds). Cheers.

Thank you! From eighteen to sixty-five.

Charles Boyer turning into Juliette Binoche.

My memoir title.

Lol

Using the Latin cum (pronounced "koom"), rather than the English "with", is an affectation, but not the worst affectation around. When spoken, it is easy to detect. When written it should be italicized to emphasize that it is Latin.

even italicization seems a bit affected when the meaning is apparent. am I wrong? isn't it commonplace now to just type out Latin phrases normally, or at least the more common ones?

but even when cum doesn't mean splooge, it really shouldn't follow the word kindergarten. especially not when the next word is a noun that can be modified by this pairing to make a really lulzy phrase like that

It could have been solved by putting dashes to indicate that it is a three-word phrase, like garage-cum-workshop.

Or heck, both dashes and italics. But that wouldn't have kept me (or you lot) from snickering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorlton-cum-Hardy

... the Bee Gees spent a large part of their childhoods there.

... not to mention Chorlton & the Wheelies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo6C_CebBqc

the cum wheelies, call them by their name

also: in latin it certainly means "with", but in english (as for example in that new yorker tweet) it doesn't mean "with", it's something more like "a cross between" -- hence it *isn't* latin and is only being put in italics to indicate it doesn't mean jizz (which of course draws even more attention to this meaning it doesn't have but can't shake off)

(lol shake off)

RIP chorlton on medlock

Getting increasingly pissed off with "gifted", which no-one (apart perhaps from lawyers) used in the UK until about five years ago, as I recall. We were all perfectly happy with "given" and "gave" back then. I heard a radio DJ announce at the weekend that Bowie had "gifted" All The Young Dudes to Mott the Hoople, which is almost certainly not the case.

i saw 'mouse' used as a verb earlier today.

https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/04/20-years-ago-microsoft-changed-how-we-mouse-forever/

i mouse
you mouse
we mouse

"mouse over" has been computer-speak for "hover" for more than 20 years!

I have never heard that before.

there's a JavaScript "event" called "onmouseover" which means "when the user puts their arrow over this bit"

i will admit this is pretty niche

gift as a verb goes back to at least to milton, mouse as a verb is as old as cats

nouns becoming verbs has been an utterly absolutely basic process in (and strength of) english since the elizabethans at least tbh, if it genuinely distresses you go learn some other weedier language with declensions or equivalent nonsense

calvin is correct, hobbes is wrong

― mark s, Wednesday, July 26, 2017 8:49 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mouse#Verb . 1988 for computer mousing (mouse-over is, i think different, and more common). but there are 4 other definitions there i'd never heard of (a mouser, i guess is a thing that cats can be)

"Please and thank you" is a trash way to ask for things

calvin is correct, hobbes is wrong

― mark s, Wednesday, July 26, 2017 8:49 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one that drives me nuts in my office is "sunset", as in "we'll be sunsetting this program over the next few months"

It drives me nuts when people abbreviate ‘thanks’ (an abbreviation itself) to ‘thx’.

sry

THANKING YOU

'thx' is better than being gushed upon

hey we've all got our own kinks

It drives me nuts when people abbreviate ‘thanks’ (an abbreviation itself) to ‘thx’

okay "suzy"