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 think my reflex is “all good” or “we’re good,” which is likely exactly the same but maybe is my effort to take agency not sure

"It's all good" became so overused among hippies in my area in the early 2000s, that one of my friends would snap back at them, "No, some of it sucks!"

I really dislike people saying "does it pass the sniff test". Just feels gross and inappropriate for talking about a piece of software or a technical idea in the workplace, which is where I hear it most. I guess it comes from checking food in your fridge but even then it conjures horrible images of someone very carefully smelling a rancid piece of meat.

i use the sniff test on my armpits

I don't even like people doing to sniff test on milk

sure beats putting foul chunky milk in your mouth

“cuck”

It’s such a right-coded insult, usually coming from guys who totally want to watch their wives getting nailed*. It popped up in a thread on here recently and I wrinkled my face and said “ew” out loud.

No problem with the kink, just it’s use as an insult in the past few years.

“Getting his/her flowers”

I’m just sick of this. I see it constantly now. It’s over, come up with another phrase.

Cuck is also over.

xp: Yes! Still bugging me.

Gave them their flowers/gave him his flowers/gave her her flowers

Been hearing this crop up a lot lately. My understanding is that it means to give public praise and acknowledgement, perhaps to someone whose work has gone unrecognized. I don't know the origin. It just irritates me.

― peace, man, Tuesday, February 4, 2025 10:57 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Origin seems to be in African American religious culture. Linguist Ben Zimmer compiled examples of uses going back to the 19th century:

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2024-August/165778.html

Well, thanks a lot, jaymc. Now I feel like a jerk. :)

Haha not my intention. I just got curious. Agree that it has become overused.

Yeah, and I'm honestly glad to know the history, too.

lots of now "annoying" phrases on social media derive from Black American culture — the problem is everyone else borrowing them and repeating them until they're tired cliches

frankly that observation is itself a cliche at this point!

yes it's one of those things that is ruined by young whites who repeat it endlessly like parrots. I'm reminded of the sketch from SNL a few years ago where Gaga and Bowen Yang tell their straight friends to stop saying 'slay'.

The monkey paw here is that when these ppl take a break from pilfering African American slang we end up with everyone using incel slang instead.

So, Black... pilled?

The thing that actually annoys me the most is when people are doing "old-timey" speech and they put "est" and "eth" on the end of everything, not just verbs. I hate it so much.

ease thyself back

m’lady

i was behind a nissan altima the other day that had a license plate frame that just said "m'lady" and I could not tell if they were serious or ironic, but they drove like an asshole and cut me off either way so I ran them off the road regardless

some falstaff hardman shit

seeing this a lot as a reaction on social media:

"oh, so he's DUMB dumb"
"...she's CRAZY crazy"
"...it's OVER over"

especially annoying when the judgment rendered doesn't actually feel warranted, but the sassiness gives it this air of confidence.

only like three people in the world should get to be sassy and it’s basically none of us

I'd like to bring Earl Weaver back for a day, just to hear his answer to the first reporter who asks him, "What about Palmer, Earl--is he in your circle of trust?"

not necessarily annoyed by this, but feeling like 'late stage capitalism' is breezily tossed about, and I wonder: where did y'all get this take? did I miss something, some essential essay?

Capitalism started in like what, the 1840s? Are we really in the end stage? Or is this shit just ramping up? I see nothing to contradict this. Everything I see is just a wholesale effort to capitalize on every single facet of our lives

I'd love to see the end of this rapacious economic system, but I don't see that we're anywhere close to that end when most are leaning in (including myself using fucking instagram)... maybe I should've posted this on the Controversial Opinion thread instead

“early stage en-serf-it-all-ism” is kinda negative but i’m always ready for the new style

i was gonna try “new school re-slave-it-all-ism” but

So long as we live in the present under capitalism, it will always be the late stage.

I understood it to be a riff on "late-stage cancer" e.g. has spread everywhere and is about to kill the economy it is a part of

Yes, the idea is that financialization, the markets becoming ever more divorced from actual material realities, the rise of bullshit jobs etc is quantifiably different from previous stages of capitalism. "Late" is a very relative term - consider how long the decline of the Roman empire took - though ofc climate change, nukes, etc. can accelerate. The point is it's intrinsically unsustainable and this phase makes that reality more naked than it's ever been before - as to whether what follows will be socialism or barbarism, well, I'm not feeling very optimistic.

xp exactly

I understood it to be a riff on "late-stage cancer"

ah okay - the illness metaphor works... economic system as pathology
I saw it as some wildly optimistic prediction, e.g. "It's finally winding down" which just doesn't make any sense in current conditions

capitalism is pretty resilient, unfortunately

from 1972

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1340778293i/931838.jpg

Capitalism started in like what, the 1840s?

industrial capitalism, yes, but this system had been emerging for at least a century beforehand (i.e., "early capitalism")

whether or not it's helpful or not for us common folk to through around these specialized marxist economics terms, i'm not sure. i hear sometimes ppl say "end-stage capitalism" as a kind of joke/wish, i don't mind it tbh

*throw around

cancer/capitalism is a metaphor with a lot of mileage imo

except for the fact that you can beat cancer into remission i guess

“spicy” to mean anything intense.

I’ve been seeing a physical therapist and when my muscles are getting a workout she asks if it’s spicy. Then it popped up somewhere else. Do not like, unless it’s talking about something sexy and then I will allow it.

Ha ha I used spicy yesterday and almost immediately came over to post about how I’m tired of spicy. I kind of left it in as a joke to myself.

In the sense that what I wrote depicted not something spicy but horrific and murderous and genocidal

the spicy must flow

capitalism is pretty resilient, unfortunately

fortunately the earth and its natural systems are also resilient under the onslaught. if I had to place my bet on which survives longer, capitalism or life on earth, I'll take life on earth every time. I'd say human life will probably survive capitalism, too, but narrowly.

Whenever I see the word "spicy" I remember The Onion's Our Dumb Century, where the headline for Huey Long's assassination was "Senator Huey Long Assassinated, Cajun Style: Dies 'Real Spicy Like'".

"as to whether what follows will be socialism or barbarism, well, I'm not feeling very optimistic"

That depends on whether you blow up the reactor or choose to merge with Helios. Tracer Tong posits a future where humanity can rebuild along more local lines, without being perverted by a global conspiracy, which is romantic but doomed to failure. The alternatives are to disconnect Bob Page from the network and hand it over to the Illuminati, who come across as the lesser of two evils, or to merge with Helios and become a benevolent cyber-dictator, which at least cuts out the middle man. But what does J C Denton know about parking regulations and plumbing?

I chose Tong's ending the first time I played Deus Ex, because it's the most romantic. It's impractical and won't work, but isn't that the thing with romance? It's impractical, and it doesn't work, but the heart exists in a world of its own.

I also learned from Deus Ex that people who specialised in swimming - such as Michael Phelps - were moron losers! They should have put their points into big guns and hacking. Furthermore Usain Bolt can crouch at high speed, silently, and he can also run really quickly and destroy supply crates by jumping on them, whereas a trained Ninja can only do one of those things. And thus Usain Bolt > Ninja. That's the "greater than" sign. I think. I hope it is.

re capitalism this is a book i’m looking forward to reading

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295668/capitalism-by-beckert-sven/9780241269053

fortunately the earth and its natural systems are also resilient under the onslaught. if I had to place my bet on which survives longer, capitalism or life on earth, I'll take life on earth every time. I'd say human life will probably survive capitalism, too, but narrowly.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, April 6, 2026 9:05 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i agree pretty strongly with this! i think human life will stick around but evolve into something that looks pretty different than it does today, like it has for millenia.