Thank you Crotalus for explaining “price point” better than I could have.
“Hanged” is only used in the context of a noose-around-the-neck type event. Otherwise it’s always “hung” as the past participle.
Innovative.
Creative.
Transformative.
Also “fascist”.
Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)
Ill, when referring to traumatic injury: “She was badly injured in a car crash last week, and is still gravely ill.”
No, she is badly injured! Illness only refers to organic sickness, such as an infection or malignancy! Argh!
I didn’t go through the whole thread so this one has probably already been mentioned, but I get slightly annoyed whenever somebody uses the word since as a substitute for because, as since is supposed to denote time.
On the matter of irritating phrases, only one comes to mind: I absolutely HATE it whenever I hear a woman tell a guy to “be a man.” I’ve never had anybody direct that phrase at me, thankfully, but every time I’ve ever heard it directed at somebody else I’ve always wanted to retort something along the lines of “be a woman, bitch.” Funny, yes, but also true lol.
It is what it is.
STOP SAYING THAT.
Similarly I hate it when people use the word impact to mean effect or affect. Particularly when I read it in the newspaper it’s like the author is saying, “I’m a professional writer but I can’t be bothered to remember which of affect or effect is the noun and which is the verb.”
I ran across one amusing instance of this. I received a company memo once which was talking about an automobile recall. It said something like, “There has been a recall for problems with breaks. We checked and none of the cars in our fleet have been impacted.” Were one of the cars impacted due to a break failure, I’d hope you’d notice before the recall was issued.
Being a synesthete makes this a sticky issue for me. Auditory input always comes bundled with another sensation, usually the sight of a color or, more irritatingly, a taste. For that reason, there are a lot of really mundane words I simply can’t bear to say, and have had to spend years cultivating my ability to tolerate in conversation.
The worst example? Smell. Ugh, just typing that gave me a shiver. There’s something about that word that makes me go to ridiculous lengths to avoid it in conversation, even going as far as to remark on the taste of the air in a given place and hoping those around me know what I mean. Freaking terrible, and seemingly without any rational basis other than chemical cross-talk in my brain.
On the more vulgar side, I hate the word “pussy.” It just sounds so gross and uncouth in any context.
Also, “power-” anything. I get a weird picture in my head when I see something like “power breakfast.”
This is a perfectly acceptible use of the of the word. Also read here.
As I’ve said before, I can’t stand the word ‘trifecta’. I’ve noticed a lot of commercials have been using this recently to make their product sound cool or something… I can’t stand it!
Scrumptious. No one should use that word around anyone over age 5 and I’m not even sure five-year-olds should be subjected to the word.
“Delish” - short for “delicious”
“Vacay” - short for “vacation”
“za” - short for “pizza”
“Vajayjay” - we all know what that’s short for.
Socialize. Lately people I work with have started to use it to mean gathering opinions on something. “Let me socialize this concept and I’ll get back to you.”
It makes me scream. Literally.
So power pussy is right out then?
You mean you don’t visualize something grotesque when you hear that? Or perhaps a poorly conceived Silver Age Superman feline sidekick…
I don’t really mind people using any words they like, as long as (a) they know how to pronounce them, (b) they use them in the proper context, © they don’t mistakenly use them in place of a near homonym, and (d) they’re real words.
A few examples:
(a) Pronouncing ‘deteriorate’ “detiereeate.” Why insist on using words in conversation you can’t pronounce properly? Just say ‘falter’, or ‘degrade’, or ‘diminish’, or ‘weaken’, or some other synonym. Please.
(b) Saying ‘literally’ when you mean ‘figuratively’. There must be millions of zombies walking around as often as folks have literally died, or literally jumped out of their skin, and been subsequently able to tell the tale.
© ‘Flesh’ as ‘Flush’ - You flush out a fugitive. You flesh out an idea. ‘Exacerbate’ as ‘Exaggerate’ - To exacerbate is to quicken. To exaggerate is to broaden. Stop mixing the two. Sheesh!
(d) ‘Conversate’ is not a word. It’s ‘converse’. ‘Cartoid’ is not a word, no matter how many times you repeat it. It’s ‘carotid’, and how the heck did you make it through medical school, you nitwit?
I know it’s widely accepted, but Febuary still bothers me.
While we’re on the subject, the use of the word “orientated” always pisses me off, but should it, or does it honestly have a meaning distinct from “oriented”?
I used to agree with you, Sister, and the phrase still jars; it seems like such a throw-away apathetic response - but then I found myself saying it as well. In the right circumstances, it can convey a certain kind of resigned acceptance of an unchangeable situation, which one must then work to overcome. Of course the problem is most people use it in the way Seinfeld used to say, “That’s a shame.” (i.e. in a completely dismissive way.)
Slightly related: does it bother anyone else when the dictionary definition uses the actual word they are trying to define in the definition itself? That always strikes me as cheating similar to how a teacher would ask one to use a vocabulary word in a sentence and the smart-aleck kid would say something like “‘Impact’ is a word that means ‘strike forcefully’” or “My teacher asked me to use ‘impact’ in a sentence.”
Anyway - both of the example sentences (The decision may impact your whole career. The auto industry will be impacted by the new labor agreements.) sound better (to my ear) using “affect” rather than “impact” - or maybe just less like jargon. Yes, the usage does have historical precedent, but these days it sounds more like jargon than the perfectly-applicable “affect.”
I’ll second infantilizing the language (“thinky thoughts”? Really?) and the incorrect use of “literally” (the SNL sketch used to make me cringe).
I’ve always disliked “incentivize.”
Hell no. In fact, it kinda turns me on.