Heh. My sister (who lives with me, and I love her dearly) does something like this. I’ll say something like “Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?” and she’ll say “Would you?”
Well, duh. It would have been awfully rude of me to offer if I wasn’t willing to actually do it, wouldn’t it?
OTOH, I have the habit of using “Okay?” as a filler in my conversations, and it drives her nuts; for instance, I might be telling her about helping my 10YO with her homework: “So, mudgirl has three pages of math homework, okay? And each one takes at least 20 minutes, so then I’m late starting dinner, okay? And you know what that means. . .” etc. Ever since she pointed it out to me (I honestly didn’t realize I was doing it), I’ve tried to at least reduce the frequency.
After about the second time I heard that (In the early 90’s, in the Second or Third grade), the obvious response became “Yeah, but it’s not, so where is it?”
Huh…the context I’ve always read, or heard “leer” in usually gives it a sleazy bent. But the description of leerY does help it make a bit more sense. But the way I hear most people use it, is to mean exactly the same thing as wary.
For instance “I’m leery of strangers”. I don’t know why, it just makes me have that little cringe, it just has an awkward sound/feel to me. (yes FEEL! :D).
“Rip off” - way overused to describe any creative work that bears any superficial resemblance to any other superficial work. There’s nothing new under the sun people. That thing that you think the new thing is copying (even though it only shares some minute thing in common) itself bears an uncanny resemblance to enumerable things that went before it.
“Hipster” - meaningless term used to deride people someone arbitrarily is biased against for their way of dressing or talking, or who didn’t like the movie Juno or anything that resembles it in any fashion whatsoever.
“Hard work” - contributes to the false and counter productive notion that the meaningfulness of your job is proportional to the amount of suffering you endure to complete it. I prefer “work smart” (efficiency of effort) or “satisfying work” (work that is meaningful for the experience itself or for the good that it does the world).
“What’s up?” / “How are you?” / “What’s new?” other meaningless platitudes in question form. I appreciate expressions of acknowledging my existence and pinging my general well being, however, I hate rhetorical questions that expect actual answers, that’s just oxymoronic. Instead, just tell me what’s new with you. If I have exciting or distressing news, I will mention it without your prompting.
“That’s not actually ironic”. Actually, it might be. There’s different types of irony, from high grand literary irony, to low end mere reversal of expectation. And even if it’s truly truly not irony, who cares? Someone who feels like making a really old joke about a Canadian pop star will raise their social status deserves to be taken down a few notches.
A certain person in my life has taken to rubbing her thumb and pointer fingers together as a way to emphasize certain phrases. Which just annoys me, because, I don’t really think most of the phrases deserve extra emphasis, and also, I associate that gesture with meaning “moolah”.
“Little shit”. My parents have used this as an arbitrary term to belittle any persons younger than them who behavior they disapproved of for any reason. Soooo demeaning.
Can we do phrases we love? “Way” as a rebuttal to “No way” is fairly standard but I was watching “Stand By Me” the other night and was amused and delighted by the childhood rebuttal for “bullshit”: “bulltrue”. I might use that a few times before it becomes cliché.
Yes. It acquired that connotation because it was used to mean peeping and spying (that is, sly and cautious observation) for sleazy purposes, and people associated it with the intent rather than the method–leading to its misuse as a synonym for words like “ogle” and “gawk,” which of course are not sly or cautious at all.
Most people who say that are probably better off with “wary,” I agree.
So, funny thing, it wasn’t until I played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that it occured to me that Weary and Wary were different words. Call of Duty 4 has an achievement called “No Rest For the Weary”, where you use your knife to kill a wounded enemy soldier while he’s crawling. Modern Warfare 2 has one called “No Rest For the Wary”, where you use your knife to kill an enemy before he knows you’re there. Turns out Weary means exhausted or tired, Wary means alert and careful.
For some reason I have recently grown to hate the word ‘pwned’ or ‘pwnage’, particularly when people say it out loud (it’s also annoying online though). It just seems like something only 12 year old boys should say, and anytime I hear an adult using it it makes me think of them as being the kind of weenie basement-dweller who does nothing but play video games all day.
“My druthers”. No. Fuck off. Anyone who uses that cloying, little-finger-raised phrase should be locked up with no chance of parole.
Also “I’ll be with you momentarily” means “I’ll be with you for a short time”. Not “I’ll be with you soon”. You can stick your incorrectly used “momentarily” up your arse for nothing, and FUCK OFF while you’re doing it.
My former boss, when faced with the outcomes of several fucked up projects (which, incidentally, I had been a Cassandra about, with a mere 15 years’ experience, and having been hired at great expense as a subject matter expert in that very subject, yet still a lone voice in the wilderness at project commencement), would say:
“Well, we are where we are”.
Meaning “we’re hosed, so let’s make the best of a bad situation”.
The way she would object to my initial concerns, by the way, would be to say:
“Choose your battles.”
That annoyed me too. I did choose my battle. I chose this one, because it was fucked up from the outset. What she meant was “I do not choose to fight the other senior managers in order not to fuck the project up, for some political reason or other”.
Having chosen not to fight that battle and discovering that we were where we were, who was the poor bastard left to pick up the pieces? Me.
Not sure if this counts, but I have never taking a liking to ‘lol’. I cringe inwardly often when someone I’m conversing with online uses it. I have never used it, opting instead for derivatives of ‘ha!’ or complete sentences with swearing and positive modifier, i.e. That’s fucking hilarious".
If we are doing hand gestures, I’m adding in EFFING air quotes.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! Here in J-land, it’s usually some guy who studied/worked in the US in the 1990’s, and thinks it’s clever to toss those into conversation. I’d almost prefer people would just travel back to the 1970’s and toss out a Fonzie ‘heeeEEEeeeyyy!’ thumbs-up if they’re going to go to all the trouble of diggin up rotting old gestures.
