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?"

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding

Doesn't seem so long ago that we acknowledged that meat/etc wasn't never wholly "protein" in the first place. My inner biochemist would like "a protein" to still mean, like, immunoglobulin G or keratin, etc.

It also makes me think of Subway, eight varieties of "protein" that all taste the same, just like the eight varieties of "bread" that all taste the same, and all the sauces which... you get the idea.

Ugh, protein. ‘Choose your protein’ just sounds gross.

Choose your weapon...

I get the dislike of 'pick a protein', but 'choose your starch' is way worse. have def heard that in my lifetime (probably in SF).

I'm definitely not a gym bro or a diet person, but I do tend to think of satisfying meals as vegetable + protein + carb. More from a 'delicious combo' than any science.

I think some of it also comes from the 'advice' you're bombarded with re baby feeding/ weaning. If someone has never had that responsibility and pressure it's probably easier to not become ingrained.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been told about staaaaaarch options by a server with a broad Minnesota accent.

My actual mental image of "starch" is a can of Niagara spray starch, for ironing clothes.

https://i.postimg.cc/k59fvCRj/s-l1200.webp

In the moving-out brouhaha of my last break-up, I bought dinner at a pharmacy: cooked chicken breast pieces in a sealed plastic container, ketchup-flavoured rice crisps, a zero-sugar Gatorade, and ate it in my car, with the spoils sitting on the passenger seat, and I took photos and sent it to a friend asking if I was eating "boy dinner" and it was confirmed that it was exactly what I was eating.

― always sometimes easy time (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, October 19, 2026 6:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is gay boy dinner and i'm familiar with the menu

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/jun/15/lunch-of-suffering-plain-white-people-food-goes-viral-in-china

i also really hate the nutrisciencing of food language

"... a handful of oatmeal mixed with low-fat yoghurt, with half an apple and a carrot. If such a meal is to extend life, what is the meaning of life?”

Indeed.

i love that kind of shit in the morning. most relatively unprocessed foods with a lot of fiber actually taste good and feel good to me. also macro nutrient categories are good.

yep, every morning it's fat free greek yogurt with granola or oatmeal and a bunch of fruit, hoping to help stave off diabetes

I stopped listening to music, I just listen to AI-generated lo-fi study beats now, helps me better regulate my mood.

Kinder otm re “advice” — definitely pregnant women and new moms get the most. I feel like men are now getting the same food and “scientific” diet admonitions that women and girls have been bombarded with for decades.

Diet and nutrition were part of the home ec classes girls were required to take in school up until the 1970s (at the earliest)

I stopped listening to music, I just listen to AI-generated lo-fi study beats now, helps me better regulate my mood.

― Bob Karol G (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, October 20, 2026 9:51 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wait is ai-generated lo fi study beats supposed to be healthy food in this metaphor? that's interesting.

Tbf "meat and two veg" long precedes the veggie talk.

xxp Reminds me of when we first moved to the UK and lived one minute away from my son's primary school. My wife would try to take a hot lunch for him and the school were baffled and unhappy at her for daring to do that, they would give her leaflets with advice like "don't just give your kids crisps and a chocolate bar for lunch!" as if she was being somehow a neglectful parent by not wanting him to have cold cheese sandwiches and carrot sticks and a fruit shoot.

wait is ai-generated lo fi study beats supposed to be healthy food in this metaphor? that's interesting.

― old helen (map^2), Tuesday, 20 October 2026 17:02 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not healthy food but "healthy food"

Wordplay I had missed - the use of veggie + tales to get something resembling the full word "vegetables". Sad to say evangelical punning went over my head for so long

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeggieTales

later on the page, this cursed image caption, "Mr. Lunt, Pa Grape, and Larry the Cucumber at the Celebrate Freedom 2007 concert"

also cursed "Junior Asparagus Bedtime Friend"

that's a (sub-optimal) meal deal, imo

I was told that "boy dinner" has a veneer of "post-gym protein load" to it, but my frame of reference was limited to a single millennial friend on this

"Journey."

As in: "In 2007 I began my writing journey..." Yeah, no.

i’ve got your boy dinner right here

aka my “post-gym protein load”

Fped

lol

Junior Asparagus Bedtime Friend = 20th century schizoid man … now I am cursed.

I also hate “journey.”

I won’t justify the “protein” language but as a total jock who often needs to protein load, I understand it to a certain degree, and it doesn’t annoy me.

I will say that I resent the projection that people who care about what they put into their bodies are “joyless” and don’t know how to “enjoy life.” Maybe the idea that just eating whatever shit you want is “enjoying life” is a actually the disordered thinking.

i know the internet has moved well past this but i still feel a pedantic twinge when someone uses "TERF" to describe a transphobe who isn't a radical feminist

"I won’t justify the “protein” language but as a total jock who often needs to protein load, I understand it to a certain degree'

LOL the entire historical thred about this. i assume it's long abandoned one, tho i don't know or care. the people who spend a huge amount of their efforts to chase results that are useful only in the last 5% of performance bettter be fucking PRO, as they said in the teens.

as far as shorthanding food into protein carb fat or nutritional sectors, fine. it's not un-useful in the big picture, but it's used for daily application that is often just delusional.

I will say that I resent the projection that people who care about what they put into their bodies are “joyless” and don’t know how to “enjoy life.” Maybe the idea that just eating whatever shit you want is “enjoying life” is a actually the disordered thinking.

― out of the cradle endlessly party rocking (the table is the table), Wednesday, 21 October 2026 20:18 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not meant as a personal attack, it is the entire culture (I'm thinking UK here but USA seems to be similar) that has a fucked up relationship with food, we are all to some extent products of our culture.

...i.e., yogurt

Hunt3r I don’t know or care about the historical thread.

I bicycle close to 45 mi/week, climb and strength train 3-4 days a week, all told. All available literature points to .7g/1g of protein per pound of body weight with the amount of exercise I do, and I often find it hard to reach the lower end of that if I don’t resort to supplements. But sure, laugh away and be a dismissive dick

LOL the entire historical thred about this. i assume it's long abandoned one, tho i don't know or care. the people who spend a huge amount of their efforts to chase results that are useful only in the last 5% of performance bettter be fucking PRO, as they said in the teens.

as far as shorthanding food into protein carb fat or nutritional sectors, fine. it's not un-useful in the big picture, but it's used for daily application that is often just delusional.

― i am beyond the number of fingers (Hunt3r)

why do you care?

love me some tactical protein

a) tabes and all, i’m sincerely sorry to seem a dick— it’s a general comment about me if course we needn’t pretend.

b) knowing the generals and following from there is great, totally still do that. when my 20 y/o kid bought a food scale lately i forced a talk.

c) alfred, i think you know, let’s don’t pretend. it’s because of me chasing performance i did a lot of orthorexic shit in the 90s.

when you’re weighing your portions, you BETTER be chasing the last couple %. and by then your physio should be doing it for you.

and for all my sincere apologies— and they are sincere— there’s shit i laugh at. been there too much. partially a laugh at me.

seems like there could be a better thread for this line of chat... unless we wanna talk about 'fiber-maxxing', then you're in the right place

I am actually not bothered by the categories tbh … thinking about aging and medical problems that require dietary changes… like, if you are used to eating red meat or lol BACON SAUSAGE etc and don’t know what else contains protein… it can be helpful… or, y’know, being reminded that potatoes are starchy carbs … also portion control idk … though I am certain that in some contexts this would annoy the shit out of me

starchy carbs

O no another platty jubes

c) alfred, i think you know, let’s don’t pretend. it’s because of me chasing performance i did a lot of orthorexic shit in the 90s.

With all due respect, I didn't know -- this is the kind of detail that gets lost on ILX after three decades.

Hunter, I get it. I have had problems with disordered eating my whole life— for reference, I was 215 in December of my freshman year of high school, and 118 by April of my sophomore year. At the moment I am
hitting what I need to but getting everything right, especially as my metabolism has slowed (I am 42), has been very fucking tiresome. Sorry to have lashed out.

you’re all super kind thx. I remember like 25+ yrs afo how i was gonna meet my protein recommendations i was like “yo that shit’s impossible even with greek yogurt in a funnel yo.”

“ago” plus other errors.

also tabes, upon late review those numbers are real hard to read, sorry again. i sure hope you’re well, happy, and content. i know battles similar or overlapping to those, that’s all.