I skipped over all the zombie posts so I don’t know if it’s already been mentioned:
“Per se.”
As in, “Wellllll, you’re not being kicked out of your apartment per se…” …um, dude, you just told me that I have to vacate the apartment. There is no “per se.” Fuck I hate that saying.
Once there was a speaker at a show and he was talking about dog training. He prefaced very point with a heavy sigh and “I know you’re not gonna listen to me, but…” My husband and I couldn’t even stay for this guy’s talk because he sounded so freakin’ pretentious and high on himself.
It’s certainly redundant; either “whence” or “from where” would make more sense. But to be fair, they are following a pretty respectable precedent. “From whence” is often used in the Authorized Version of the Bible:
And in the Athanasian Creed from the Book of Common Prayer:
What’s wrong with “fornicate”? I’m not aware of any Anglo-Saxon verbs which mean “have sexual intercourse with someone to whom you are not married”.
It may not mean, as you put it “the exact same thing” in a dictionary.
Dictionaries report the usage of words.They are our slaves not our masters… There are subtle differences between most so-called synonyms.
That said, I agree with you, a lot of people like to use a long (and hopefully impressive) word when a perfectly good and common one will be more accurate.
“Simplistic” for “Simple” is one of my favourites…
As for…
“vis-a-vis pretentious shite”
“vis-a-vis”… French. Definitely pretentious.
“Shite”… possibly pretentious, I’ve not read Ulysses, and it’s on my list of top ten things not to do before I die.
Started reading this, didn’t know it was a zombie until I got near the bottom of page one and saw Speaker for the Dead mention “the high school crowd”. I’m pretty sure Speaker hasn’t been in high school for some time now. :smack:
I have some but the most laughable has got to be “methinks.” Nobody ever says that but I’ve run across it several times here on the Dope. Makes me want to smack 'em and force them to drink beer.
The misuse of “I.” “It was given to Larry and I.”
No it wasn’t. Nothing has ever been given to “I.” To me, yeah. Subtract Larry (the plural) and you get “me.” Please never give me something from “Larry and I.”
For me, it’s the tendency of Christians to randomly slip into Olde English when they talketh about the LORD. Because apparently, not only is the KJV the One True Revealed Word of God, but the LORD can only heareth you (or perhaps the LORD only understandeth, or only payeth attention) when you speaketh as if you were reading the KJV.
(Also, the convention of LORD in all caps in the Bible always bugged me. :))
Oh, as to periods in phone numbers–I tend to avoid it now, but when I did it, it was mostly because I was using the keypad and it doesn’t have parentheses.
Dear defense attorneys: when you use the phrase “rush to judgment” it merely serves to convince me that you have a sleazeball for a client.
Reporters, commentators and government officials: please stop making yourselves sound moronic by referring to the situation “on the ground”. We’re already pretty sure what’s happening is on the ground, as opposed to 20,000 feet up or orbiting Venus.
Even if these have been mentioned in zombie-land, they’re still occurring and action is urgently needed.
I’m confused. How else could you possibly pronounce “leisure”? Rhymes with the first half of “freezer” and the second half of “treasure”, right? What other option is there? Do you say the second syllable like the second syllable of “monsieur”? Because that would sound pretentious to me.
