Late last year, I read a syndicated column in the newspaper by a man whose name escapes me right now. He pointed out some words and phrases that he was so sick of that he thought everyone should voluntarily retire them in the new millenium (or the last year of the old millenium, depending on your analness). I agreed 1000% with his column and I’m not quite sure why it took me 9 months to start this thread, but here it is. What words and phrases have you heard so many times that you just want them to go away and never come back.
Here’s a few :
proactive (anyone that works for a large company will back me up on that one)
Most of these seem to be retired IRL, but I still see them pop up on Ricki Lake sometimes.
whatEVer! (including the “hand made” W)
as IF!
talk to the hand (and all variations including but not limited to: talk to the flesh 'cuz the breath ain’t fresh; talk to the fist 'cuz the face is pissed; etc.)
“like” (Like, hi. Like, my name is like, Silver_Fire and like, I’m a member at the like, SDMB and like, I really like, like it. Tee hee!)
Here are some from the wonderful world of academia:
“Tease it out,” as in “lets tease out the underlying assumptions…”
“Through the lens,” as in “If we look at it through the lens of gender…”
“Foucauldian,” referring to something that has something to do with something Foucault might or might not have written at some point.
And to put it all together, kids: “If we look at it through the lens of gender, we can tease out the underlying Foucauldian assumptions.” AAAARGH!
A couple of semesters ago, I had two professors. One was young, trendy, and prone to using the phrases and concepts that were hip at the moment. The other professor was much older, and utterly immune to academic fads. Every week, the older professor would complain about an overused and fashionable term. In the next class, the young, trendy professor would invariably use that exact term. It was amazing.
I could do without “paradigm.” I’m none too enthusiastic about “enthused." I would be happy to see “transpire” expire. And unless you know something about statistics or computer programming, you really shouldn’t be playing with “parameters."
Also, everything Green Bean said. And thank you, neutron star, for mentioning “proactive.” I had hoped that that particular abomination would have faded from our lexicon years ago.
Finally, even though I know I’m in a tiny minority on this one, I detest all those verbs cobbled together from a noun and “-ize,” like “prioritize” and “scrutinize.”
Man, I’m a curmudgeon. And this is my new favorite thread.
Let’s touch base (another wonderful, vomit inducing business phrase)
I can’t think of a good example of this offhand, but next time you’re at your local video store, look closely at the front of the boxes. A good 75% of them have some generic, sometimes punny, uttering of lameness on them like “She knew how to play the tuba. He taught her how to love.” The soft core pornos have the worst lines. Sometimes they make me laugh out loud. People must think I’m insane.
OFF TOPIC : Speaking of video stores, I like to sometimes go into Blockbuster and rearrange the employee favorites. For example, Employee Jill’s favorite movie used to be Forest Gump. Now it’s Female Perversions. Employee Bob used to like The Godfather and Easy Rider. Now his favorites are Son in Law and Jury Duty. Sometimes the movies go for weeks without being rearranged. It’s a blast!
And then there are the words that do exist, but people use improperly. I almost wet my pants trying not to laugh when our firm business manager explained that we were going to “institutionalize” some of our large clients (not that it wouldn’t be a good idea for one or two of them).
Sorry to hijack the thread, but can we REVIVE some expressions/words that have dropped out of common useage:
for example, I have always loved the late 18th century word “plugugly”-can we get people to use this more?
…also, I like to use “shall” (instead of “will”) it just sounds more elegant to me…
I could go on and on…it seems we have lost a lot of good words and expressions fromthe 1890’s on…who will help me to revive “plug ugly”?
I shall. In fact, I used it just yesterday. Expanding on this topic, I think we need more Montgomery Burns-type phrases injected into everyday conversations. I don’t hear “layabout” and “troglodyte” nearly as much as I would like (performance reviews at my job nonwithstanding).
I never use any expressions that I hate to hear, and I just tune them out when spoken to me. But one seems to have super powers and has just recently started to irk the bejesus out of me - 24/7 - I don’t know why but it drives me nuts when anybody used this in a sentence.
one that I am really getting sick of is people putting ‘e-’ in front of a word to mean that it is done online. e-trading, e-commerce, e-ticket. Just stop it.
And I’ll second “let’s touch base”. I hate that one.
Another one that is in its 15th minute is bitch pronounced ‘bee-AHtch’. It sounds retarded.
How about “Let’s do lunch.” And maybe it’s 'cause Ah’m from Texas, but I always heard the expression “pug-ugly”, not “plug-ugly”. What’s so ugly about a plug? Pug dogs are not exactly pretty.