My favorite pretentious word is sesquipedalian, because, you know, it IS sesquipedalian.
No, it isn’t, because it’s too easy.
For the dernier cri in recherché pronunciations, I say it in Ancient Greek: [ouranós] (oh-oo-rah-NOHS).
From way back in the thread…
Wait a sec…saying “DrAWma” as opposed to “DrAma” (which I’m taking to rhyme with “Gramma”) is pretentious? That’s the only way I’ve ever heard it said.
My contribution is people who use “The City” to refer to San Francisco.
Them: “I’m going up to The City tonight.”
Me: “Oh? Which one?”
I submit to you the most pompous, haughty, and pretentious word in the English language: qua.
Qua means either “as” or “in the capacity of” (that’s pretty much what “as” means anyway).
Any time you encounter the word qua when it’s not part of a latin phrase, count yourself lucky as having been witness to one of the most pretentious people to ever exist.
That’s what I thought, until I noticed it’s a lot easier to type numbers that way. No shift needed.
Not if you don’t know how to spell “plugugly”.
The BLT sandwich I had for lunch the other day was quintessentially sooeeeeeeeeeeey-generis.
Even when the identity of the agent is unknown or immaterial? Compare the following:
I’ve been robbed!
vs
Someone robbed me!
As maligned as the passive voice is, I think it works much better here.
You should be typing your phone numbers on the numpad anyway, where a ‘-’ is just a pinkie (or ring finger if you prefer) away 
(I too hate the periods)
“as per” your instructions (a favorite of secretaries). It’s just “per your instructions.”
“Comprised of” when you mean “composed of”. The whole comprises (includes) the parts. It is NOT comprised of them. Pretentious and uneducated.
I also detest the usual round of bizjargon: “We’re going to maximize profits by leveraging our synergies, using a ground-zero budgeting approach, and right-sizing the business.” (Translation: We’re reconsidering our expenses by starting from square one; we’ll be firing some people and assigning their jobs to other people who have similar skills and related knowledge."
Oh, jebussfrukingkeeristonacrutch- YES!
That’s a hassle, though. Besides, I’d be willing to bet that most typing these days is done on machines that don’t have dedicated numpads.
When I am using a full keyboard, I’ve always been irked by the fact that the rows are in reverse order compared to a telephone keypad. I imagine the convention on computer keyboards came from the world of adding machines and calculators, and I never understood why the phone companies didn’t follow suit. After all, anyone who had already worked extensively with adding machines and the like was already used to doing that by touch.
But the periods just look so pretentious!!! I don’t care how much easier it is. 
(I agree it’s annoying that keypads don’t use the same convention as phones)
It makes sense to use the phrase if you’re in the area as it’s universally understood and serves to conveniently distinguish San Francisco from all the nearby suburbs. Same thing if you’re not in the area but it’s relevant to the conversation. (All this is IMHO, of course.)
But to say you’re flying back to The City, from anywhere far enough away that you can actually do so on a scheduled flight, is very pretentious.
Yeah, but those of us from other cities in the Bay Area (like San Jose) get a little miffed sometimes when pretentious hipsters act like SF is the only “city” worth talking about.
It’s probably just me, but I hate it when news readers begin sentences with “Now,” — not because they are reporting breaking news, but just to sound like they are geniuses, patiently explaining something to their uninformed viewers.
This is a recent development for me, and I think it began when I started forcing myself to watch Fox News before the election to see what the enemy was thinking. Sean Hannity on Fox News is the worst — he begins two sentences out of three with “Now,” and almost invariably follows it with something stupid.
“Now, we know that Obama was watching the Benghazi attack in real time…”
“Now, the UN has always done whatever it could to destroy Israel…”
“Now, the War on Christmas is just the latest attempt of liberals to abolish religion…”
Good point that last one, but SJ outweighs SF by a good margin, and thus if one is on the Peninsula or even the lower East Bay, “the City” could just as well mean SJ. True, SF is more urban than SJ, but SJ is hardly a suburb, being the 10th largest city in the uSA.
Mind you, when Herb Caen used it, SF was the local big city.
Bizjargon can be worse when used outside a business context. My businessman uncle was executor of his father’s will. After his father’s stroke but well before his death, this uncle would speak to my other uncles and aunts about achieving “closure” with their father.
Because it is no longer 1611, and because “fornicate” implies a value judgement that frankly isn’t polite to state aloud. One’s feelings on premarital or extramarital sex simply aren’t necessary to share with anyone other than one’s partner.
What’s wrong with that expression?
The word closure has had many different meanings for a long time. To describe an emotional process, closure has been a term in psychology since 1910.