# Phrases/terms that aggravate the hell out of you **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 26, 2020, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894 "2020-10-26T02:04:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/61 "2020-10-26T18:07:09Z")
Not a fan of the recent trend of calling every minor problem a “hiccup”. If you come to me complaining about a problem, I will try to think of a solution. If you come to me complaining about a hiccup, I’m going to suggest the only known hiccup remedy, which is to do nothing and wait. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/62 "2020-10-26T18:08:14Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > A couple of years after that he couldn’t sleep one night, decided to see what was on TV, and then his head exploded. I only heard about that last part second hand, might have been an exaggeration. In other words, he decided to see what was on TV, and then his head literally exploded. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/63 "2020-10-26T18:09:26Z")
It’s still corporate speak today. The only one that really sets my teeth on edge is using “ask” instead of request or demand. "The ask here is " or “I know it’s a big ask”. It always makes me scowl. “Looping in” and “circle around/circle back” are eye rollingly dumb, but not necessarily incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/64 "2020-10-26T18:14:15Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > If you come to me complaining about a hiccup, I’m going to suggest the only known hiccup remedy, which is to do nothing and wait. I’ve found that unexpectedly leaping out of my chair, making a loud shout, and throwing my arms up as if to attack the complainer has two happy results: They stop hiccupping if they were, and, even better, they stop coming around my desk unannounced asking me to fix their stuff. Give it a whirl and report back. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/65 "2020-10-26T18:16:06Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > I hate utilizing “utilize” and don’t think I’ve ever seen a sentence where it wouldn’t be better to just use “use”. It’s incorrect to use “utilize” for “use” because they don’t mean the same thing. You use a knife to cut materials, but it can also be utilized to turn screws. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/66 "2020-10-26T18:20:10Z")
“I can’t with X” for “I can’t deal with X” “He can into Y” for “He succeeded doing Y” … and some more variations, letting a proposition do a verbs job. So I quickly inferred the meaning of these idioms when they started appearing some years ago. And actually I find them quite charming. But can someone tell me how they started? Ironically speaking ungrammatically is hilarious? Local dialect became universal? Catch phrase from a TV show? Fun expression in a foreign language was absorbed by english? ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/67 "2020-10-26T18:23:35Z")
There’s an area of my brain that thoughts escape from when I’m not paying attention. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/68 "2020-10-26T18:25:23Z")
> [@Chelonaut](#): > > So I quickly inferred the meaning of these idioms when they started appearing some years ago. And actually I find them quite charming. But can someone tell me how they started? Ironically speaking ungrammatically is hilarious? I think a lot of this stuff came from Twitter. It artificially forces people to be brief, which makes them realize that some words aren’t as necessary as we think. For example: “I just can’t put up with that show” is basically indistinct from “I can’t with that show,” but it’s more terse. Mostly it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes they seem a bit whimsy-poisoned or brusque. But again, that’s Twitter, either you can with it or you can’t. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/69 "2020-10-26T18:27:38Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Meetings in which someone says in response to a conversation that’s not strictly on-topic “let’s talk about that offline”. “Offline” has a specific meaning already. In a similar vein, asking if someone has enough “bandwidth” to take on a project. Just ask if they have enough “time”. There could be a whole separate thread of annoying workplace cliché phrases. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/GyV_UG60dD4/maxresdefault.jpg ""Weird Al" Yankovic - Mission Statement (Official 4K Video)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4) Mission Statement ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/70 "2020-10-26T18:29:58Z")
Alum. Alum is aluminum potassium sulfate, used in small amounts when making pickles. A person who graduated from a school is not aluminum potassium sulfate. OK, apologists, I get that it’s a shortened version of alumnus or alumna, and it’s pronounced differently from alum when spoken. With all the phrasings talking heads use to try to sound special and educated why don’t they just finish the word? It’s only one more syllable! ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/71 "2020-10-26T18:30:59Z")
“This is the most important election of our lifetime…” ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/72 "2020-10-26T18:53:28Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > It’s incorrect to use “utilize” for “use” because they don’t mean the same thing. You use a knife to cut materials, but it can also be utilized to turn screws. “it can also be used to turn screws” seems perfectly straightforward to me. If people were very strict about only using utlilize when it was a novel/unexpected use of a thing, that might be fine, but people use it all over the place in practice. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/73 "2020-10-26T18:58:50Z")
that was fucking painful ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/74 "2020-10-26T19:01:32Z")
This is a much quicker hit. > **[The Adventures of ACTION ITEM, Professional Superhero!](https://professionalsuperhero.com/)** > > The Adventures of Action Item, Professional Superhero - Official Homepage ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/75 "2020-10-26T19:45:13Z")
I’m smiling smugly, because at a state-wide convention, during the executive vice president’s keynote, I doodled a BuzzPhrase Bingo. Not content with amusing the half-dozen at my banquet table, I slipped out and ran 250 copies, walked back in with them (on a clipboard, important for legitimacy), and passed out a stack for each table (asking “would you mind passing these around”). Center square was indeed SYNERGY. Epilog: I watched as people chuckled, checked off boxes, then pointed me out when The Meeting Maven decided to track down the culprit. I shrugged, “I’m sorry, but I distinctly heard the VP say we needed to be ‘maximumly engaged’. BuzzPhrase Bingo _is_ maximum engagement, and I just took the initiative because apparently no one else here does that.” Turns out there was a VP at my table, and the next day I got an email asking me to help her with a big outreach project. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/76 "2020-10-26T20:03:18Z")
> [@digs](#): > > (on a clipboard, important for legitimacy), A good liar could steal half the gold in Ft. Knox armed with just a clipboard! Works every time. > [@digs](#): > > Turns out there was a VP at my table, and the next day I got an email asking me to help her with a big outreach project. Apparently advertising works. And at least one VP at your company isn’t a stuck-up turd. Congrats! I hope! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/77 "2020-10-26T20:09:45Z")
I am surprised nobody has mentioned the use of “impact” to mean either affect or effect. It gets to me mostly on newscasts, but anywhere it’s used grinds my gears on the edge of a knife. Yeah, I understand that if you don’t know what you’re doing and you try to use effect, you will probably get it wrong. But, journalists are wordsmiths. They get paid for that shit. They are supposed to be the ones who know which one to use and could use the opportunity to teach by example. It’s really not that hard, you just have to think about what you are trying to say. I’d like to think my rants would affect people’s behavior, but it’s likely to have no effect whatsoever. Or, I’d like to think my rants would impact people’s behavior, but it’s likely to have no impact whatsoever. (Impact my head) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/78 "2020-10-26T20:11:42Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I slipped out and ran 250 copies, Doesn’t bingo lose some of its inherent playability if everyone has a copy of the same card? ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/79 "2020-10-26T20:14:05Z")
I hate when people (usually politicians) use the word “folks”, or even worse, “folk”, instead of “people” to give it a more common, “folksier” tone when they’re describing something. Like a politician saying “I’ve been hearing from folks that…”. To me, it just sounds manipulative and stilted, like they’re trying to be one with the commoners. I could barely tolerate it when Obama would use it (often), but I’ll give him a pass. No one else has any excuse. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894/80 "2020-10-26T20:16:22Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > A good liar could steal half the gold in Ft. Knox armed with just a clipboard! Works every time. Or get a scoop when working for : > **[The Paper (film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_(film))** > > The Paper is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Randy Quaid and Robert Duvall. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Make Up Your Mind", which was written and performed by Randy Newman. > The film depicts a hectic 24 hours in a newspaper editor's professional and personal life. The main story of the day is two businessmen found murdered in a parked car in New York City. The reporters discove... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phrases-terms-that-aggravate-the-hell-out-of-you/923894.md?page=5)