Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

Four Words: Use Other Words Please
"Use other words please."
Commonly used phrases that inexplicably bug you
Most irritating cliche/phrase/expression
"Taking Things to a Whole `Nother Level!"
words that annoy
Words that should earn the author a slap
PROVERBIAL and other tip offs to poor writing

-- caitlin (wpsal...) (webmail), December 23rd, 2003. (caitlin)

Oh yes, yes yes. I second that one. And the people who say it, say it over and over.

I also have a horror of people who write prolifically in all caps.

This is true.

But, this is a topic that should be dealt with routinely and harshly... the only way we can correct the language and suppress it's organic growth is by exposing and banning every new usage as it occurs... Isn't that what the French do?

Also: 'fridge,' girls who refer to each other as 'girl,' proactive...i'll be back when i think of more....

'poetic justice'. Used by the lazy to describe all 'justice' the speaker approves of, instead of a particular type. The adjective is rendered meaningless.

Agree re 'bird' for woman/girl, and lament its threatened return. Stinks of 'I'm being un-PC, where's my medal?'. Also the C-person uses it, which kinda ends the argument.

Wait, huh? Fridge is the thing you put food in, whats wrong with it?

I'm picturing him saying things such as "Would you like me to remove another beverage from the refrigerator for you, whilst we watch some association football?"

I had a related issue some time ago about the word "intuitive." Like an actual out-loud argument in a newsroom.

Someone had used "intuitive" as praise for someone "John Doe is courageous, dedicated, and intuitive." My fellow copywriter and I were like, "intuitive of WHAT?"

The writer meant "able to intuit things well," akin to "perceptive." But the current meaning is more "easy to understand and use," like a user interface.

XPOST - I'm familiar with the aesthetic movement, thanks. I doubt, however, the majority tweens out there using it as an adjective know any of the above. The way it's being used now does seem to basically mean that something is cool/ looks good / is stylish. They are not using it in the sense that someone might have 150 years ago come on.

https://nassauweekly.com/the-problem-with-calling-something-aesthetic/

it’s like someone calling an activity difficult “at altitude,” and I’m just “at WHAT altitude, there are many.”

"Stylish" is a word my grandmother would have recognised. "Aesthetic" to say something looks nice would have left her befuddled.

When faced with those two options, any sane young person should use option two.

it’s like someone calling an activity difficult “at altitude,” and I’m just “at WHAT altitude, there are many.”

honestly I'm struggling to think of a scenario where this phrase would be ambiguous.

iirc hunt3r is a mountain dude so like 6,000 ft vs 10,000 feet vs 14,000 ft are worth differentiating

"At altitude" is the same thing as "at scale" or "at speed."

"Can your product deliver these results at scale?"

"Yes."

(As long as the scale is microscopic.)

you say "at altitude" when you mean "at high altitude". if you're already at high altitude and talking about an even higher altitude, you'd probably switch to actual elevations in meter or feet or whatever.

Hey man, pass the bong so that I can get at altitude

we used to use the term “get lifted” when we were talking about bongrips

"bongrips"

lol

heavy

Em ee tee ayche oh dee man

Wait so your work colleagues are asking about how intuitive a website is to someone who is high?

doing something "in anger" meaning, doing it fully

this is just an English thing as far as I know and it's very confusing

i think it's a WW2 thing - difference between drill and action

"love me some (xxxx)" I can't believe people are still writing like fucking Slingblade in 2025

"aesthetic"

I'm willing to be corrected, but that particular word reminds me of another thing that annoys me. It's cliche. Specifically the adjectivication of the word cliche. As in "that's so cliche".

I'm reasonably certain that adjectivication is the correct word. I had very little formal training in the English language. I cannot off the top of my head tell you the difference between an adverb and an adjective. I learned to write instinctively, by sniffing dog toys and playing with my mother's perfume. And then, as if by magic, I could write. In addition I also consumed a lot of written media and imitated it, just like an artificial intelligence, and just like an artificial intelligence I don't understand what any of it means or why it exists or anything.

On the other hand I know that I am real. I am here, right now. Standing on my own two feet. Which makes it difficult to type because I have to bend down. Perhaps I should use this chair that happens to be conveniently placed in front of my computer. SIT CHAIR. It worked. I'm going to go back on topic now. In my world something is a cliche. Something is such a cliche. Something has become a cliche. It is so cliched. All of this is fine and dandy, but "that's so cliche" is bad and wrong. It does not read Sutter Cane. It is bad and wrong.

You'll just have to mentally insert the accents. I'm not going to do it. I know how to do a euro sign. €. It's alt-gr and 4. A rare, rare use of the alt-gr key. I could copy and paste the accent but I'm not going to. When did I first read the word meme? Quite near the beginning of Deus Ex there's a bit of flavour text in a news bulletin that uses the word. Nowadays modern adventure games give the player a short mission objective with an arrow pointing at the next waypoint, but in those days it was still common for games to give the player nothing and expect them to read masses of flavour text to work out what to do. I'm looking at you, original System Shock.

So I consumed all the flavour text in Deus Ex. None of it was useful because it really was just padding. But it changed me. Made me the man I am today. Taught me that Icarus had found me and I should run while I could.

"The question must be asked: is the global rise of terrorism a haphazard response to a decimated economy or is there a pattern? Does UNATCO face coordinated ideological opposition? Some groups - Silhouette in France, for instance - have declared a "Meme War," or "war of meanings" in their terminology. ... With sophistries and doublespeak, they portray "freedom" as "obedience," "democracy" as "tyranny," and UNATCO as the perpetrator of terrorism—an idea as shocking as it is reprehensible."

I remember playing that game and thinking "in the future they will have email and computers and the world wide web" and it blew my mind.

By derivation, cliché was originally a past participle, as you can see by the accent.

I am in the minority in accepting its use as an adjective, akin to saying "overused" or for that matter "passé," also past participles that function fine as adjectives. One can think of it as either "that which has become overused," or as simply "overused."

Compare "the departed" or "the accused," past participles that can function as nouns or adjectives without it causing much trouble. Consider "The accused murderer was acquitted" vs. "The accused is innocent."

Also in the age of movable metal type, commonly-used phrases were cast as a single block. These blocks made a clicking noise like when placed in a row of type. Hence, cliché. Onomatopoeia.

Once again, I've never seen or heard "that's so cliche" or the like.

You’d say “that’s so clichéd” instead.

I mean, like, yeah? Am I missing something here?

Attested in American Heritage dictionary circa 1950 but frowned upon by a majority of the usage panel.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=clich%C3%A9#:~:text=As%20is%20the%20case%20with,single%2Dspaced%2C%20and%20fated.

Good link— I had no real understanding of the etymology of stereotype, which is discussed there, too.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed hates “learnings” as much as we do

People do use the word “cliche” like that and I agree it is annoying.

just saw someone refer to a mental breakdown as a "menty b". girl you just gave me a menty b thanks.

Cardi B vs Menty B

lol menty B has been a thing for....20 years? 15? Might have been Aussie originally, it sounds like something they'd say. I think I heard it via UK teen discourse.

"Menty B" pops up in Google Books from 2023 onwards, and earlier via OCR mistakes, including a German textbook from 1501.

It seems to be popular with the kind of books that have advertising copy in the actual book title - e.g. they're called Something Something Something: A Totally Heartwarming Romantic Comedy with Cake or Something: The Brand-New Utterly Uplifting Summer Read.

And not for example Heart of Darkness: An Hilarious Amazon Road Trip With Lashings of Horror or Infinite Jest: The Performative Read-On-The-Train TikTok Sensation etc.

So do they call your period a "Mensty P" in Australia?

menty b is definitely from meme culture, been around for a while

There's some kind of comedy skit (or maybe an "overheard in public" kind of thing?) that I've never forgotten in which two Australian women discuss getting a "hissie" (hysterectomy) "in the hossie" (hospital). I think the point is that nothing is too much for a Strine.

Along the lines of that, I heard 'cozzy livs' a lot last year for the cost of living crisis. It truly is death by whimsy and I fucking hate it.

whimmer deathsies

Oi mate, the deathsy-weathsies

I did enjoy statey foons as a risposte to platty jubes.

speaking of "whimsy" (if we must), i've seen that used as an adjective a few times recently

what the shit is this fuck

I've decided I don't like the word, "shingles"
it just conjures up snack food made from crunchy, dried up goat scabs.

Is "menty b" of the same vintage / derivation as calling a neurological episode (e.g., syncope, fainting, seizure) a "'sode"?

In the show Wonderfalls the main character hallucinates then insists she's alright - another character says "no you're not alright; you had a 'sode."

If I have only ever seen one episode of a tv show exactly once, I can often remember it with surprising clarity 20 years later. Lamest superpower evar.

No, I feel like 'sode and 'za and the like are distinctly American, maybe even Valley Girl (boy?)
Whereas Platty Jubes, Menty B etc are painfully English.

YMP, you might enjoy this game which aptly enough is called 'Sode (Episode actually) https://episode.wtf/
My other half has that with film music. If he hears it he'll usually know what the film was, even if he can't name it. To me, a lot of film music sounds like generic 'film music' - obviously there are the greats but he can pinpoint them all.

I can identify a Zimmer score from a mile away, fwiw.

you mean a scory z?

> Something Something Something: A Totally Heartwarming Romantic Comedy with Cake

when you buy such a book from Amazon as a kindle ebook, all of this ends up in the book title field

here's one from today's daily deals:

The Accidental Soldier: As recommended on Off Menu and The Rest is Entertainment - 'Very, very funny, genuinely brilliant', MARINA HYDE

Which, coincidentally, is the:
#1 Most Gifted in Middle Eastern Historical Biographies

Undies

"when you buy such a book from Amazon as a kindle ebook, all of this ends up in the book title field"

Well, that's the thing - the advertising text is literally part of the title. Or at the very least it's on the front cover of the book as a kind of subtitle. I was specifically thinking of Tilly Tennant's The Little Village Bakery: A feel good romantic comedy with plenty of cake. In the case of The Accidental Soldier the blurb about Off Menu and Marina Hyde is just Amazon fluff (the title is, technically, The Accidental Soldier: Dispatches from Quite Near the Front Line), but The Little Etc is literally called etc.

The same author has published 43 novels in the last four years, including A Cosy Candlelit Christmas: A wonderfully festive feel good romance, A Very Vintage Christmas: A heartwarming Christmas romance, Christmas for the Village Midwife: A feel-good, heartwarming and cosy Christmas romance, and Cathy's Christmas Kitchen: A heart-warming feel-good romantic comedy.

And yet, the stereotypical pre-AI 1990s sub-Terry Brooks fantasy novel was usually called The Something Chronicles: Something: Book One of the Something Saga, so who am I. It's only a matter of time, if it hasn't happened already, before Temu has bulk-listings for books that have literally every word in the title in order to get the maximum amount of hits.

The ultimate book will be called Aaaaargh!: An Accidentally Awesome Apotheosis of Allusive Antics etc ... Zygotic Ziggurats!

'Cracking' in all its forms.

Rachel Reeves says she is 'cracking on with the job'
A cracking good time
even 'cracking one out' i.e. masturbation

I guess this is derived from craic? Anyway I hate it.

Other way round actually craic is derived from crack.