Often when pronounced “off-ten.”
Anyways.
Grow as in “grow your business.”
“Orientated” bugs me too.
I hate “proactive” and I hate the word “impact” as a verb.
“Myself.”
When it’s used properly, I don’t mind it, but my boss mangles it all the time:
“The report was reviewd by Tom and myself.”
It’s ME, not myself!!! Me is a perfectly acceptable word!!!
dude…
Sorry, umm, Dude.
My daughter went through a dude phase. “So dude, like this dude went to like talk to this like other dude…” I would be reduced to a little drooling ball with bleeding ears by the time I found out how she did on her bio exam.
Another little piece of personal hell, brought to me by my children.
FWIW, the word “crisp” reminds me of lettuce and celery, and the word “crispy” reminds me of potato chips.
I hate having to say “rural.” It’s like ending up with a mouthful of mush.
<hijack>Utilize and use do not have the same meaning.
You can use a screwdriver to drive a nail… but you utilize a screwdriver to drive a screw. When something it utilized it’s being used for its designed purpose, its utility, dig?
I in no way mean to imply that “utilized”, as used in businesspeke, is being utilized, and not used unecessarily.</hijack>
A thing that annoys me about my own writing it the tendency to use “that is”, “therefore”, and “for example” constructs. I.E. ergo E.G. Parenthetical commentary is also rampant… and quotation marks… and gratuitous elipses.
The only “words” I could say I hate, rather than merely hate listening to other people use incorrectly, is all the SMS abbreviation crap in any context other than SMS… and I’m not terribly fond of it in its natural habitat, either. I don’t mean IMHO, OMG, LMAO, ROFL, FWIW, YMMV, AFK, et al. from IRC… I mean the “Wut do U want 2 do 2day?” type.
Closure…
Hey, it is already over. Get over it.
instead of trying to pronounce it Asked which comes out as Assed just say Axed…it is so much easier and most people don’t notice that you are saying Axed instead of Asked but the would probably notice Assed.
Can’t think of any words I hate except when people over pronounce the word Button and they say say the T’s and the O sound really hard…it;s better to say Butten. Oh yeah and I hate people over pronouncing the G’s on the ends of words like running sounds better as runnin. I will stop now because I went a lil’ off topic.
Analogous, because I cannot pronounce it correctly.
That makes two of us. It comes out sounding like ruwoo when I try saying it.
Any “sl-” word. Slab, slat, slot, slush, sliver, slob, slither, slit – the sound made by the initial “sl” grates on me. It may be my least favorite sound.
Also, most “-sh” words: fresh, mesh, mash, slash – I hate the final “sh”. (As an aside, this makes “slush” especially terrible.) I take pains to use substitute words for “fresh” in my job: uncooked, raw, not frozen.
I hate words used in food commercials:
Rich
Hearty
Meal
Delicious
Nutritious
Tender
I mean, who the hell says, “Wow, that was such a hearty and delicious meal!”?
Smegma and maggot.
They are yucky words for yucky things, but even if they were nice things, I would hate them. If milk was called smegma, I wouldn’t drink it. If kittens were called maggots, I wouldn’t pet them.
Oh, what’s wrong with the word ‘panties’. Panties is great because it’s like one of those words that sounded naughty but you could say it as a kid, words like phalanges. HEHEHEHE. phalanges.
Now knickers, that’s just…wrong. To me knickers = granny pants
I don’t know if it just me that has this trouble…
…but just try saying, “Rural Brewery”
I can’t do it.
And I hate it.
I hate the word bubbly when it is used to describe someone’s personality. I can tolerate bright, enthusiastic, upbeat, or even perky as a personality description, but bubbly should never be used to describe personality. (Unless you are describing a person who has drunk too much champagne.)
I’ve never liked the word “purse.”
I can say that. But I cannot, absolutely cannot, say “free throw.” It’s always “free frow.” Free frow. I sound like an idiot.
And, while watching an episode of Gilligan’s Island last night, I discovered that I can’t say “sea snake.” I tried about ten times and kept saying “snea snake.”
Not being able to pronounce the dialoge on Gilligan’s Island has to be the low point of my life.
Oh, please, please, please tell me that you just forgot a winky-smiley at the end of that.
There’s very little more grating than “axed,” which at best makes the speaker sound utterly illiterate. “Assed” has the virtue of being close enough to a rapid “asked” that my guess is most hearers won’t notice the difference. But “axed” is obvious, and even more obviously wrong.
And another thing (praise be to Gilda Radner): I think I hate “utilize” even more than micah and matt do. 1010011010, it would appear that you’re following the American Heritage dictionary, which notes:
IMHO, “utilize” so badly expresses that distinction that one invariably is better off rewording.