RHYS BOWEN: I read an interesting post recently on words that we hate. I agreed with a lot of them but the one I’m thinking of particularly at the moment is WOKE. Since it’s Black History month I did some digging about the origin of this word and found that really only African Americans have the right to use the word. It originated in the nineteen thirties when speeches urged the African American population to WAKE UP and realize how and where they were being subjugated by whites.
Over the years other Black orators urged African Americans to ‘wake from their dreaming’ to acknowledge the reality of their situation. Those who did were WOKE. The rest of us can definitely agree with the sentiment and express solidarity but the word should be used by the group it applies to. It must feel rather how I feel when non Brits put on a fake accent and say “Pip pip. Cheerio, old chap.”
Apart from WOKE I have plenty of words that make me wince.
Awesome is one of them, especially when spoken ten times by my waitress as I make my order. Or Absolutely by the same waitress. "May I have a salad with that?" Oh absolutely." Or equally bad, "No problem." Of course it's no problem. It's on the menu. You are the waitress.
Of course LIKE as a filler ten times in the sentence “It was like, you know…
Literally–does not drive me literally mad. Just annoys me.
Irregardless, of course. Not even a word.
Twenty four seven…
Each and every…what’s wrong with ALL?
At this moment in time… what’s wrong with NOW?
John’s least favorite word is WHATEVER. I confess to using it at times when I’m annoyed with him.
So what are your least favorites?
LUCY BURDETTE: my least favorite word is actually three: xxx DID NOT DISAPPOINT. I hate reading this in reviews of anything–is that the best you can say? How about something more active like xxx THRILLED ME, or EXCITED ME, or even BROUGHT ME JOY? Okay, rant completed.
RHYS: That’s a put-down in disguise!
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Lucy! I SO agree. It’s…so deflating. I hate words like incentivize–what are the other ones like that?
And oh, I completely cringe at “reach out” and “circle back” and “touch base.” Or, and “loop in.” As in: I reached out to loop her in, because I had to circle back and touch base. AHHHH. Spare
me.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Can I add a phrase? I know it’s a lost cause, but every time I hear “impact” used in place of the perfectly good verbs “effect” and “affect” I tremble with rage. And don’t give me “Oh, it’s too hard to tell them apart.” Somehow, native English speakers managed for hundreds of years until the 1990s, when TV meteorologists started telling us we were going to be “impacted by the storm?”
My least favorite word based on the sound or it is “moist.” Unless you’re describing a particularly delicious cake, get that adjective out of your mouth. (P.S. The proper word for a brownie is “gooey” or “fudgy,” not moist.)
RHYS: His lips against hers? warm and moist...
And does anyone get lay and lie correct these days? I don’t think so.
HANK: There are whole facebook pages about hating moist! And many many articles about it, most entitled “Why You Hate the Word ‘Moist’.” And interestingly, “foist” does not inspire the same reaction. Moist is a total thing. (Which some people may also loathe.)
HALLIE EPHRON: Among my least favorite words: plop. As in she plopped down on the sofa (or in a chair) or wherever. It has never and will never evoke a human body falling like a suddenly stringless puppet from a standing to a seated position. It’s got another layer of meaning, a sound that is most frequently encountered in the bathroom. Moist has similar errant connotations.
RHYS: Now I can’t get that image from my head, Hallie!
So who has more annoying words to share? We're all mystery writers and fans. Can we come up with subtle and untraceable ways to rid the world of people who use them?
Impact and impactful, yes. Sounds like another bowel issue.
ReplyDeleteMy husband has developed the exceedingly annoying habit of saying "Whatev", instead of continuing to make a case for whatever we're discussing (okay, arguing). I think it's A) a lazy cop-out, and B) just a way to irritate me.
I've noticed this more with British English speakers, but "has got" instead of just plain "has". Truly, you could kill the word "got" almost entirely without ever missing it.
Julia, how else do you describe a cake that isn't dry? It isn't juicy!
Speaking of waitstaff, I know there's something that drives me batty whenever I hear it from a server, but it's been so long since I've been out for a meal I can't remember what it is.
10 lashes with a wet noodle for your husband... can you say: passive aggressive?
DeleteBritish also say I was sat instead of I was sitting. Drives me crazy
DeleteAh, Karen, take another look; I made an exception for cake. It's the ONLY exception, but it's an important one.
DeleteI've been annoyed for years by the new usage of "around" - as in, we'll discuss the issues around the problem. What wrong with "with?" Or using around instead of about.
ReplyDeleteAlso, starting every sentence with "So..." Grrr.
Using "over" in place of "more than" is my pet peeve . . . .
ReplyDeleteJoan, I have to admit that I used to be guilty of this one a lot. But I had a boss for about five years who shared your pet peeve, and she succeeded at changing my habit.
DeleteJoanne, that drives me absolutely crazy. I’m not sure why that particular miss you so annoying… I hear it all the time!
DeleteAgreed! Even though the style guides say this is now OK, I draw the line!
DeleteThe Olympic athletes are characterized as "and she's only 15 years of age!" What happened to "She's fifteen years old"?
ReplyDeleteMargaret, there's a whole genre of writing devoted to using ten words when five would do.
DeleteRHYS: You have covered most of the phrases that annoy me.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of doctors who are often interviewed about the pandemic in Ontario. Both of them end the interview by saying "No problem" after being thanked by the anchor. STOP IT!
Another phrase that comes up in interviews:
THAT BEING SAID or HAVING SAID THAT
And I hate it when a server at a restaurant says "Hi GUYS" when we are all women!
Right, Grace. Just say, "You are welcome," or "Glad to help," or "My pleasure," or "Thank you for inviting me. " No?
DeleteYes, those are all fine ways to end the interview, JUDY.
DeleteOr waiters who call me Miss not ma’am I am clearly not a miss
DeleteRHYS: Even worse, I have had a few store owners call me SIR instead of Madame or Ma'am! They claim they could not tell I was a woman because I wore my mask, lol.
Delete@Grace-I periodically have this problem. Some years back I had a shoulder length shag hair cut and a guy in a store called me Sir. I was tempted to pull up my shirt and flash him (I was without a bra at the time).
DeleteI think people are just being lazy and not really looking at the people with whom they are talking.
LIBBY: Hmmm, Not sure if they're being lazy or if they really can't figure out that a customer in the checkout line wearing a generic black parka (and mask) is a he/she. My hair is now shoulder length and the parka hood was not up!
DeleteUsing "less" in place of "fewer." COME ON, that's an easy one to get right!
ReplyDeleteThat's one that bugs me, too. Also GIFTED. Since when did gift get verb-ized?
DeleteHallie, I may have to expand the little story that I "gifted" you all below, to use some of the new words turning up here.
DeleteOh, good one! Yes, gifted. She gifted him a watch. That’s so terrible!
DeleteBut 're-gift" (or without the hyphen?) does seem to serve as a useful verb.
DeleteI hate most of the "power words" that I must sprinkle in my copy to make it more 'impactful' so that readers 'engage' with it!
ReplyDeleteShweta, if everyone planning on going into business was forced to take English composition and read ten classic novels, the quality of corporate writing would go up 100%.
DeleteLOL Chew on this one:
ReplyDeleteIt was like this each and every time, but not today. Irregarless of the times before, she needed to tell him.
“So, My Darling,” she said, “like, I am really moist”
“No problem,” he replied as he plopped onto the couch. “We have got over three more hours together, this is not the time to circle back.” And he pressed his lips to her moist mouth.
And, it did not disappoint.
Okay, did I get everyone in here???
Snort. Good job!
DeleteAre you try to make me choke on my coffee, Judy?!
DeleteThis is so funny!
DebRo
Ha ha ha! Good one, JUDY!
DeleteBrilliant
DeleteHa ha ha ha! Xxx
DeleteAbsolutely perfect...
DeleteBrilliant, Judy!!!
DeleteThe words “brilliant” and “amazing” are overused. There ARE other adjectives.
ReplyDeleteDebRo
Sorry Deb I couldn’t resist
DeleteHopefully for "I hope", "it is hoped", et al. It's an adverb.
ReplyDeleteCorrect: The dog looked hopefully at the sound of a knock on the door.
Incorrect: Hopefully I will never say hopefully instead of I hope.
I and me: What is so hard about getting this right?
Lie and lay: I know the difference and so does Rhys. We may be the last two alive. Present company excepted.
Reach out instead of call or contact or ask
Agenda is plural, therefore agendas is wrong.
"No problem" is problematic for me, too.
"Ya know whadda mean?" You know what I mean, longest and possibly the most unnecessary filler ever.
Oh, hopefully. I just cannot bear that. And yet, it is in such wide use in the wrong way.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteso... let me lay one on ya. "Smirk". We are smirking a lot in 2022. Last year we wore a lot of 'bespoke' clothing. I don't like 'swig' either. I now visualize someone smirking at me as the swig their coffee, wearing a bespoke beanie. To much for a quiet Sunday. I will circle back to see my impact later.
ReplyDeleteLOL!!
DeleteYou have touched on several of my least favorites, but I do have one to add: utilize. The nice, simple "use" is almost always a stronger choice. I edit it out of my colleagues' drafts all the time.
ReplyDeleteSusan, I'll be sure to utilize it when I write part II of my little tale.
DeleteThank you for all the words I hate. I'm so glad I'm not alone. Just to changes things up a bit I want to tell you about a word I love. Beamed. Whenever I see it, which isn't often, it makes me smile and I wonder if I am beaming like the character I just read about. You know that that I am not talking about the "beam me up, Scotty" kind of beamed, right?
ReplyDeleteJudi, "beam" has all the best connotations: smiling, Star Trek, and sailing ships.
Deletechange, not changes
ReplyDeleteIt's okay, Judi. We all just thought you were being ironic. :-)
DeleteHere's part II, it's PG:
ReplyDelete“Ah,” she sighed, “that was amazing.” She recognized immediately what a brilliant kisser he was.
“Hopefully, we can circle back tomorrow and do this again” he breathed as he untied his bespoke tie. “So, reach out to me in the morning. But let’s utilize the time we have left to full advantage.”
Then he took her in his arms, lied her down on the couch and kissed her again.
“His kisses had a huge impact on my psyche,” she told her friend. “You know what I mean. At the age of thirty, him and me are perfect for one another.” She smirked as she swigged her morning jolt of coffee and recounted the evening’s events. “He’s so brilliantly WOKE. And, he gifted me his tie.”
Judy, this is hysterical! If I ever need to quote badly written fake fiction in one of my books, I'm calling on you. No one would be surprised if the author of this novel was found dead. (a la THE ORIENT EXPRESS, the murder was done by another author, an English teacher, a literary critic and the editor of THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE.)
Delete;=) Make my day! ROTFL
DeleteThanks, Julia! XXOO
That was perfect! You have a real gift for this kind of humor!!! (And I know no one "gifted" it to you!)
DeleteJUDY: Thanks for part II, you made me laugh out loud (again)! Much appreciated as I deal with Day 10 of honking trucks and yelling protesters in downtown Ottawa.
DeleteYou had me laughing out loud with this one, Judy, not just smirking!:-)
DeleteHilarious!
DeleteI see lots of favorites! Guilty of Hopefully....I'll watch for that in the future. Anyways is a pet peeve of mine. Bad enough it's used in conversations, but how does it slip past an editor? Monetize is another. Go ahead and make a buck, but don't figure out how to monetize something. What does that mean? Are you printing your own? Grr.....
ReplyDeleteYou know Kait, I can give a pass to neologisms that at least provide some useful service. Monetize gives you one word in place of a phrase, which would be roughly "figure out how to turn a profit." And at least it's not "profitize"...
DeleteA colleague banned the consultants from using holistic several years ago. The business-speak is interesting - are we all so bored with saying the same things every day that when someone comes up with a different expression we are thrilled and overuse it until it also becomes trite and tired? Or is it used like a secret language signifying membership in an exclusive club?
ReplyDeleteLisa, I think it's the latter. Like back in middle school, when one type of sweater or shoes became the hot thing, and everyone needed to have one to prove they were "with it." There are a few people who think using "incentivize" and "paradigm" make them look smart, and the rest follow along.
DeleteI've been known to use "Grr" as the title of emails, so the recipient knows I'm irritated and going to be making my feelings known to them. This would be a title used for personal emails, not the emails I send to co-workers.
ReplyDeleteA phrase I dislike is "that's good enough." What is exactly good enough? Is it good enough for you? Are you looking for confirmation that your effort is acceptable or are you letting me know that you are not going to try anymore?
Fascinating to see what words bother us! I can’t really think of any although it drives me batty when people say “he goes” instead of “he said”. You’re not going anywhere, you’re speaking. LOL!
ReplyDeleteI don't know, Jenn, now I'll have to write Part III.
DeleteIt annoys the heck out of me when people say "orientate" instead of orient. The latter is a perfectly good verb and doesn't need the extra syllable. I blame the noun form orientation.
ReplyDeleteFor a long time I cringed when our waitress asked "How's that tasting?" But not anymore. There are bigger issues in life, like orientate.
I share your "orientate" peeve! I have ranted about this upon occasion for many years.
DeleteAnd commentate!
DeleteI agree with most of the words cited except for moist which isn't a problem for me.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I've come to the conclusion that if the word "like" and the f-word were eliminated from the English language, at least 75% of the population would not be able to formulate a sentence. I want to know what do these people say when they're actually angry and want to curse? I hear both words from all people, educated, not educated, male, female, young, old. This with upspeak grates on me.
My son has told me about these speech patterns (I have no idea what else to call them.) An entire family says things like "it needs fixed" or the dog needs washed." But this isn't the family where the mother mentioned she had to "unthaw" something which was new to me. Then I saw a recipe in a magazine that called for "unthawed" cranberries. Perhaps that's a regional thing?
ReplyDeleteI first encountered (deeply) this speech pattern ("needs fixed") when I went to college in Central PA, and found that people from PA (central and western) often dropped the "to be" I was expecting. They also seemed to swap a prepositional phrase where I might expect it ("Throw grandma down the stairs her slippers").
DeleteIt's a regionalism, Judi.
DeleteLanguage, as we thought we knew it, is apparently going to hell in a handbasket.
ReplyDeleteAnd all the shorthand words? How R U?
My favorite hits (er, misses) have already been mentioned, but I'll contribute here:
ReplyDeleteDuring my HR career, my skin crawled with orientate and incentivize. Orient. Incent. full stop on the verbs, folks.
That said, in my current world in Professional Organizing, the word Overwhelm has become a noun. "Dealing with all the overwhelm". It wouldn't surprise me if that's on someone's list.
I have never heard that but hate it instantly.
DeleteEverything everyone said above. Especially...
ReplyDeleteBack Formations. That is, using the noun version of a verb to formate a new, unnecessary word.
However...
Though I am a passionate, long-standing Grammar Geek, I have finally reached the point of telling myself to stop letting it all get to me.
Sometimes I succeed.
Hank: but there's always Moist von Lipwig.
ReplyDeleteI too (figuratively) boil over about the abuse of 'literally.'
If sports announcers could be given an appropriately uncomfortably electrical shock each time they use 'most underrated,' the world would be a better place.
Laughing at "Moist von Lipwig". That is a funny name. Is that a character or did you make it up?
DeleteHe's a character in Terry Pratchett novels including _Going Postal_ and _Making Money_. Great books.
DeleteThey should also be shocked for saying a runner broke contain. It’s containment!
DeleteHALLIE, that word "plop" made me think of that movie FLUBBER. LOL
ReplyDeleteLUCY, I'll remember which phrase you like when I review your wonderful novels.
RHYS, it is weird but my least favorite word is HEY. I always thought that Hey was a word for horses. Another word I detest, which is a degrading word for women, rhymes with "witch" or "rich". IMHO, that word is only used to describe a female dog.
Someone said something about the word "impact". I thought that word was used to describe scientific or medical events? I am always learning new words as a reader. Even when I read "light" books, there is always a new word for me to learn.
Diana
Reading how many people hate the word "moist" made me think of the underwhelming supervillain sidekick from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Also named Moist he was played by Simon Helberg from The Big Bang Theory. His power? He could dampen things. :D
ReplyDeleteThe ongoing effort to change the definition of the word "literally" continues to annoy me. I was de-friended on Facebook one time because the person said, "I'm literally dying right now" and I replied with, "No, you are posting on Facebook".
I don't have a problem with "no problem" since I'm completely guilty of using it myself. I use "whatever" when I'm annoyed with someone too. And I will fight to the death any attempt to stop the use of the F-word because there is no word that quite matches its ability to make your point so directly than adding any form of the F-word. And I figure if the worst thing I can be accused of in this life is having an overabundant use of said curse word, I'll be fine.
Personally, I hate the word "no" because it is the usual response I hear if I am foolish enough to ask someone out. Okay, that was my likely off-target attempt at humor. But "hopefully" my response today "did not disappoint", since I was aiming for a reply that was both "brilliant" and "amazing"...perhaps even "awesome".
I agree with the misuse of "impact" in all its forms. Saying something, like a book, impacted me sounds like I was hit with a brick, not an image I associate with reading. I prefer to say that it resonated with me, which seems to be more of soul-touching effect than impact. Speaking of "effect" and "affect", the difference in their uses has always been easy for me, as one is a noun and one is a verb. However, I do have some sympathy for those who forget the difference. Not everyone likes to read grammar books like I do.
ReplyDeleteAnother word that was overused for a while is "organic." Describing a thought or story as organically evolved seems rather too sublime. As Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "It is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous."
Business meetings seems to teem with words and phrases that constantly annoy. For years I was a part of a meeting where the chairman said "Let's tee the meeting up crisply". His version of let's get started.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teenager, I started saying "Go blow". My dad and brother blew in my face. That ended quickly. LOL. I wouldn't recommend blowing in anybody's face while we have Covid around but maybe a small fan?
ReplyDeleteThe strange sentence order in Central Pennsylvania probably comes from Pennsylvania Dutch. German uses a different order than English does.
I dislike the term "proactive." How does this differ from "active." When I was working, people who were being "proactive" were just scheduling a meeting without calling it a meeting.
ReplyDeleteWhat does "my bad" even mean? Ugh.
Justin Trudeau got himself in trouble for suggesting that speaking "moistly" was a way to spread Covid. I didn't understand why until now.
I think everyone has covered most of the phrases that bother me. But the thing that really bothers me the most is when people say "I'll sleep when I'm dead ". No! Sleep is important. And for some reason the word bristle bothers me.
ReplyDeleteFor me, a word being overused currently is "intentional." "Were you being intentional when you said that?" "No, I was trying to be vague. So sue me" (Another one.) "Were you intentional when you prayed that prayer?" "The Lord knows I tried." Lenita
ReplyDeleteMy experience as a school teacher tells me that children today have not been taught the exchange "Thank you," followed by "You're welcome." I say, "Thank you," and they smile and invariably, kindly, and (in their eyes) politely, reply, "No problem." I think we are on the precipice of a change in conventions in courtesy. As someone who reads a lot of 18th century manuscripts, I know that what is considered polite has changed a great deal over centuries. Remember all those "your obedient and humble servant"s! It rankles me, too, but about that one I try to be philosophical. The one word I did not allow in my classroom was "sucks." Kids (and probably a lot of young adults) thought I was very eccentric. I explained that my father, born 1916, had a similar knee-jerk response to the expression "pissed off." Too graphic for him -- he imagined someone urinating. I think it may be the job of older folk to patrol these language ramparts, useless as it is.
ReplyDeleteLate to the party as usual, but one of my pet peeves is the incorrect use of ‘right’ vs ‘correct’. A test answer is correct. One turns to the right.
ReplyDelete