I’m irritated by the recent trend to transform the noun “gift” into a verb (“gifted”, as in “We gifted my 4-year-old nephew a .44 magnum Smith & Wesson revolver”).
There are already perfectly good words for that: give/gave/given.
I feel bad, now, about undermining a fellow sufferer’s ire. But my 1947 Shorter Oxford (first pub 1933) has the transitive verb Gift To endow with gifts, to endow or present with; to make a present of. Chiefly Sc[ottish] 1699. So not a terribly recent transformation. But I agree, it’s one of those currently trendy things that just sets your teeth on edge.
j
Yeah, it’s the recent trendiness (at least in my perception) that irritates me.
Speaking of recent trends - why oh WHY in the wide wide world of sports does every bleedin’ sentence these days have to start with the word “So…”?
Even people of my age group seem to have gotten suckered into using it. WTF is the point? What does it add to a statement or sentence? “Hey, millenials use it so it must be cool and “with it” and I have to appear cool and “with it” at all costs”. Hey Boomers, as pointed out upthread, “cool” IS still cool. “So…” is NOT. It’s a stall and a time-waster.
Anybody?
Bueller?
“Reach out” seems vaguely creepy to me.
“Have a Blessed Day” is the one I hate most.
The one I can’t stop using: “It is what it is.”
The one that frosts my gourd the most is “general consensus of opinion”. There’s a thundering redundancy everywhere you look in that one.
I find myself using “frosts my gourd” more and more as I get older.
Another that makes me crazy - starting a sentence with “I mean” when the speaker isn’t explaining something they just said.
“What do you think if the situation in Damfranistan?”
“I mean, the carnage is horrifying!”
It’s a worthless verbal crutch!!!
Starting off (verbal) conversations with “filler” rather than just launching straight into your topic is Absolutely Fucking Fantastic and I applaud everyone who does it. *My *problem is people who just start talking to me when I’m doing something else, and are rattling off crucial information during the time that I am:
*processing the fact that they’ve started a conversation with me
*disengaging my brain from whatever it happened to be doing
*turning the ‘listen to words’ function of my brain on
“So” is just as good a filler as anything else. If it transfers over to situations where it’s not strictly needed (like writing) … shrug, people get into habits, no big deal.
My bugbear of the day is in the subject title - ‘everyday’. Not as in the OP’s totally correct and unexceptionable use, but as in “I brush my teeth everyday.” No!! No you don’t! Every … space … day - once each day. Everynospaceday - normal, usual, common. And of course a spellcheck won’t pick up on it.
Well, one of the worst attacks on American soil didn’t happen in the US:
Nitpick - it’s usually “level the playing field”. I haven’t heard of anyone using “level playing field”, although I will admit that someone might do so.
And while unlevel playing fields are going to be almost non-existent in a physical sense, they are the norm in most non-physical arenas that we deal with.
Overuse of the phrase “so, in essence…” in reply to an explanation or description of something. I guess it’s another conversational crutch or overly deferential way of them telling me “oh, I get it now”.
Example:
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Them: “What’s that thing for, what does it do?”
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Me: “It’s a thermostat. It regulates temperature by sending a signal to the hot air valve to move toward closed or open.”
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Them: “So, in essence it keeps the air from getting too hot.”
No. Not in essence, but bare-knuckled actual reality.
Of course you’re welcome to feel that way, but if you really believe that all language should be strictly propositional, then you’re not recognizing a very large part of how language works–and how it has always worked–for everybody.
Would you also insist that nobody move their hands at all when they talk? Do you consider that also to be “a worthless crutch”? Many of the words that people use–that ALL of us use–work in the same way–as functional cues, to convey things like stance, affect, etc.–things that are not propositional. Everybody does it.
The phrase I mean could be something that has come to your attention, and maybe indeed because people use it more than they need to–and I totally get that. We can both make a judgement that it’s overused. But it’s not qualitatively different than other types of discourse markers that you probably use yourself. The notion that people for some reason should use language in purely propositional ways is a conceit that doesn’t match up to reality.
I don’t know, maybe this is another US/UK English thing - Google <“level playing field”> (ie, in quotes, specific for the phrase). 5.8M hits.
j
Clerk: “Have a nice day!”
Moi: “Don’t tell me what kind of day to have.” (but unless they’re really annoying, I say it with a smile and a nod so they smile along with me)
Nitpick: US embassies are not “American soil”. Embassies are on the soil of the host country; they enjoy certain immunities, is all.
I’ll tell you what really grinds my gears are those yahoos who use “literally” in place of “figuratively”.
“I was SO shocked at the price that my head literally exploded!!”
“My heart literally jumped out of my chest with excitement!”
:dubious::smack::mad:
So…you beat me to it. Once I started noticing it I became unable to *not *notice it. It is a curse.
Watch an episode of Shark Tank (or any number of reality-type shows) and pay attention to the "so"s. Many of the pitchers cannot utter a sentence that does not begin with “So…”.
mmm
Only a curmudgeon would take offense at someone wishing them to have a nice day. Despite the idiomatic use of the imperative, they are not telling you what kind of day to have.
If you really want an answer to that, listen to this episode of Lexicon Valley, a Slate podcast hosted by Columbia University linguist John McWhorter.
Well, that’s just a really blatant case of what I explained above. The idea that ALL language use should somehow be strictly and purely propositional is patently in denial of language’s full scope of functionality and purpose. It’s a two-dimensional and misguided conceit. Language is much more complex than that.