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?"

A lot of the complaints ITT tend to be about words and phrases (and ideas) that have broken out from niche but legit spheres of interest (marketing, fitness, psychology, social justice, gen Z slang) and into the mainstream where they get so inappropriately overused they lose all meaning.

For instance "gaslighting" being used to mean "disagreeing with someone". Or perhaps the complaint upthread about "creative" being used as a noun (literally my job title is "Creative" - a legitimate word in the marketing world for what I do and what I produce as part of my job).

what is the genesis of "speaking of"?

dangling participles perhaps ill-advised in writing but in everyday speech they're as common as they are unambiguous

"speaking of" started as a regular old present participle and over time became an idiom used as a discourse marker, you use it to introduce a new but related topic

Hazel you are always the voice of reason (that is maybe wasted on this thread's nonsense)

yeah those words and phrases are breaking contain

haha, I like being able to use my education!

"Is [XXXXX] in the room with us now?"

yeah that one's getting old

akin to the aforementioned 'show me on the doll where XXXX hurt you'

“one of the only” was on a news report today, i puked and thought i’d bring it here. then it appeared in a nice poster’s thread moments later. so now this is one of the only terrible phrases i’ve adopted as my own.

it's almost 2027, all those aphorisms can be retired now, along with 'lives rent free in my head'

Apologize if it’s been mentioned, but GOAT and GOATED. So sick of it

Yes, awful.

file "in the room right now" etc alongside "xxxx derangement syndrome"

"Make it make sense".

(literally my job title is "Creative" - a legitimate word in the marketing world for what I do and what I produce as part of my job)

dl i dont mean to pick on you and i hope your job is fulfilling and pays well and makes you happy but pls, when anyone criticises the word "creative" i am betting that they would 100% include the use above in what they consider a problem

but it is literally the word and it has been the word since modern (creative) marketing began, is all I'm saying - that is the vernacular

industry-specific roles and jargon are pretty bad across the board. so many software/IT terms that were coined by twee libertarians

the problem isn’t the word as employed in DL’s particular industry, imho, it’s the leak of that word into popular parlance to describe anyone who works in a creative field. it’s capitalist reductionalism, as if anyone working in a creative field is simply a marketing demographic

Some corporate consultant dude was being interviewed about CEO succession planning on public radio’s ‘Marketplace’; speaking to the importance of identifying “talent” within a company, he said that corporate boards wanted internal candidates for “optionalizing.”

talent is 100% standard usage across the (US/CAN) HR world now: talent acquisition, talent management, talent development, talent intelligence, talent optimization, talent systems. they'll probably pick something new in a few years though

Apologize if it’s been mentioned, but GOAT and GOATED. So sick of it

― pj, Tuesday, November 10, 2026 1:30 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

its crazy how prevalent this is with the youths its one of their main words, the one that really bothers me is iconic tho theyre ruining a nice word

“optionalizing" - this one is new to me

Boston basketball fans are painfully familiar with the overuse of "optionality"

such a perfect dumb guy trying to sound smart word thats everywhere in dumb basketball guys trying to sound smart

Cosign on a lot of these plus "louder for the people in the back" and "I don't know who needs to hear this, but."

How do we feel about "priors" to mean bias or preconceptions? "Confirming your priors." Perhaps this is not new and just entering my bubble.

It's concise and it's instantly comprehensible so maybe it is good, not bad.

One of those things that maybe seems fresh right now, but will annoy us in a year.

i absolutely hate the priors shit learn to talk normal nerds

it has fwiw been around for a while but idk how long five years maybe prob longer if you read hacker news

to what extent are all words annoying like if you just threw out a word into a sentence in this thread and went ugh is it just me ugh

let me try

hearing a lot of "mattress" lately, is anyone else hearing this, "mattress" this and "mattress" that im sure this didnt use to be a thing a guy at work i dislike said it during a bad work think you know the type of guy the type of thing, bad things we dont like anyway he said "mattress" and like idk is it just me?

the seinfeldification of any single word or concept into this thread

seinfeldifocation

is it everywhere is it having a moment i feel like ughhhh its everywhere

yeah my Gen Beta colleague uses it all the time without even knowing that it was a TV show in the 90s

ughhh

but it is literally the word and it has been the word since modern (creative) marketing began, is all I'm saying - that is the vernacular

― snark of mall Ds (dog latin), 10 November 2026 12:51 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this isnt a defence

some recent posts (not darraghmac's) reminded me of this one I made uhh 7 years ago:

Nearly every time I look at Twitter I get the urge to post itt. I'm not sure if these terms are industry parlance or if Jane Espenson made them up for her blog I used to read a decade ago, but it always makes me think of what she called clams and clamshells. Twitter is rife with clams, but worse is how it's like a machine for turning clamshells into clams.

A clam is a joke or a line that has gone stale by being reused too many times. Something like "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit" might have been vivid and funny once but becomes repellent the more you hear it. Clamshells, otoh, theoretically have a longer shelf life because they're a joke form within which the content can change and stay fresh. But on twitter set-ups like *checks notes* get adopted and repeated so rapidly (and used so poorly) they almost instantly become clams themselves.

― rob, Sunday, March 3, 2019 10:46 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it might help if (unfunny) people were somehow freed from the need to try to be funny.

That said, darraghmac might be onto something bigger: we're exposed to other people's words at a level that our brains likely cannot handle. Some prick constantly saying mattress does start to annoy the shit out of you after a while, especially if he also self-describes as a creative.

i like that post i think it nails it actually

on the other hand, you need to stop trying to make mattress happen.

https://glisteningexamples.bandcamp.com/album/mattresslessness

I'm forever guilty of 'that's what she said,' in fact I said it this weekend

was it douglas adams that defined lolloping as the movement of a sprinting mattress

Clamshells, otoh, theoretically have a longer shelf life because they're a joke form within which the content can change and stay fresh. But on twitter set-ups like *checks notes* get adopted and repeated so rapidly (and used so poorly) they almost instantly become clams themselves.

Thanks for that distinction, Rob.

So a form like "tell me you don't know anything about ... without telling me..." is a clamshell?

What is "mattress," please don't make me google it

I think so? I should see if her original post is still online, because yeah I'm not 100% sure now whether the [...] would be variable enough for a clamshell, but I believe it would be. Whereas something like "Make it make sense" is a clam: a word-for-word phrase people reuse.

"That's what she said" is definitely a clam, but I will admit I sometimes find that funny if used well.

"Mattress" is an innocuous word that darraghmac selected for its banality to illustrate how any word can end up itt

clams in my mattress

that's what she said

Man, I can’t keep track of what’s real these days.

talent is 100% standard usage across the (US/CAN) HR world now: talent acquisition, talent management, talent development, talent intelligence, talent optimization, talent systems.

I cannot tell you how disappointed I was about a decade ago when I learned that the upcoming “talent show” being discussed in the workplace was just a job fair.

Xp sounds like my prom night still makes me laugh tbh

Cosign on a lot of these plus "louder for the people in the back" and "I don't know who needs to hear this, but."

I especially hate these because they're delivered with that condescending internet scold tone, and the people who employ it most are often people who learned the thing 5 minutes ago and lecturing people who already knew it

i get friend requests on facebook from random resistance liberal single gay men in their 50s who post a lot of memes that are like trump is fat etc. i'll scope their pictures and see political meme after political meme for a year or more, no photos of their real selves smiling or being a real person in real life, and tbh these poor people seem just as brain rotted as any maga type just on the other side of the fence. full on diving into "outraged internet person" 10 years after twitter turned into x is like the saddest trajectory to me.