May not be that popular outside of MY specific work site, but… If I hear one more suit utter the phrase “Low hanging fruit” one more time I’m going to scream. Used in the context of “easy stuff”
Corporate big shot : "We need to minimize the overtime worked. Lets start with the low hanging fruit by cutting XXX… "
“I’m offended by…” and variations thereof, as if the world owes them a rubber stamp for them to run around censoring things and rendering them illegal because of their dubious moral values.
I dislike the phrase: “Think outside the box.”. It always seems to translate to: “Think inside my box.”.
i dislike that too 24/7/364.25 so i don’t use it.
you don’t watch sports much likely.
RIP for “rest in peace.”
I can’t describe why it bugs me so much, just that it looks trite and reminds me of halloween decoration gravestones. Show more respect and type the whole words out!
Make that “not at all”. I live in Louisville and would make a point to wear green when U of L plays UK if I could ever remember. What other bothersome cliches do the announcers say?
Interestingly enough, I usually hate things that look rustic. 
All of them. And then they go interview athletes, who should never be allowed to speak in public. Unless they have no filter on their mouths and they tell us all the things they aren’t supposed to say.
Mine are written.
“Lurve”, although I haven’t seen it much lately. I don’t know why they used to type it, but they did. I dislike “lurves” more. It’s some form of baby talk, I guess. Baby talk is cute from babies, but babies can’t type.
“…it does” as in, “It makes me happy, it does.” I have a similar dislike for “…I will” as in, “I’ll tan your hide, I will.” Unfortunately, I’m reading a novel shot through with this crap but at least the characters have the excuse of being semi-literate rednecks from the 19th century.
“IANAL”, “IIRC”, and other acronyms I only see on message boards, but particularly those two. Bonus points if somebody gets shirty about some web abbreviations but not others. I got in an argument once defending a guy for using “u” for “you” on a newsgroup that was quite difficult to read because of all the abbreviations. I especially dislike “IANAL” and “IIRC” as they imply “Everything I’m about to say is just a worthless guess that I’m not going to check, I’m just responding to this like I respond to everything else I see.” They also strike me as lazy and obscure, possibly deliberately obscure. Lame.
“You owe me a new keyboard!” Ugh. Yeah, I really wanted the image of somebody doing a spit-take. This gets a pass but “LOL” is bad? I agree that LOL is insipid as commonly used, but I’ve seen it well done, like when it’s an admission of evil. Even when it’s not, it’s a lot briefer and less gross than “You owe me a new keyboard!”
Smilies are shit, too.
This, in case you care, is just the result of a natural tendency in speech to change n to m before b and p. That’s why you get words like impossible and improper rather than the more “logical” inpossible and inproper.
Not necessarily. The pre- of predeceased, for example, isn’t redundant in the slightest.
It’s for Requiescat in Pace, you guys just happen to have a translation with the same initials.
Nuclear pronounced “noo-ku-lar.”
Jewelry pronounced “jew-ler-y” (look how it’s spelled).
And my favorite: “like” liberally peppered through seemingly everyone’s speech today.
Example: “So, like, I was, like, walking down the street and, like, I saw this really skeevy guy who was like just, I dunno, like acting all weird and stuff, and he like was looking me like, I dunno, like sorta funny and like that really like creeped me out.”
Sigh…
“Ok fine, fer sure fer sure. She’s a Valley girl and there is no cure.”
Frank Zappa
One that drives me batshit is ‘should of’, ‘would of’, ‘could of’. It get me more often in text than speech, since I understand the reason people believe it’s ‘of’ rather than ‘have’ is because of accents and natural slurring. But to actually go and type a phrase like this that makes zero sense when you think about it - it’s got to be willful ignorance. Hasn’t it??
‘Leverage’ as a verb. The instant someone says this I know they’re trying to sell me something. They even had to change the pronunciation of the word to make it sound fancy. What’s wrong with simply saying ‘use’? I think we should leevrage our preexisting assets such as a perfectly clear set of words that should of been enough to get our point across without having to inject an entirely new vocabulary designed only to make some suit look smarter than he is.
“Speaking to…” a subject. I hear this on conference calls all the time; “Jethro, can you speak to this issue?”
See my previous post about my boss who has a boatload of phrases that all need to be abolished - Inept, Pompous Windbags (AKA Middle Management)
Oh oh.
Yes!! I have bemoaned this for years. I’m an editor, and I see this word everywhere. It’s the classic word people use because they think it makes them look smarter, and it’s in everything from proposals to resumes to deliverables. I figure if you really have something intelligent to say, you don’t have to cloak it in unnecessarily big words. And if you don’t have anything intelligent to say, perhaps you should focus on that.
The other word I am sick of hearing is viral, as in the video went viral.
I never use the word utilize, but I’m guessing there has to be a legitimate use for it somewhere, right? Or is it that in all cases utilize could be replaced with use?
And since one-one answered this earlier, I’ll try one more time.
For those who don’t like, “At the end of the day.” And I’m also guessing the older phrase, “When it’s all said and done.” What should be said instead?
RadicalPi, I was thinking of words like predrilled, prewashed, preheated, and preplanned, all of which mean the same thing if the pre- is left off.
Swimlane. (“A visual element used in process flow diagrams, or flowcharts, that visually distinguishes responsibilities for sub-processes of a business process.”)
That one’s a favorite where I work, and every time I hear it, I cringe.
I also don’t like “circle,” as in, “let’s circle on that and come to an agreement.”
I try my best to avoid as much corporatese as possible, because I think it sounds stupid.