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

yeah, there's nothing wrong with telling people to use words malaproperly

nb I reserve the right but it's not like I exercise it often

basically if you're having a normal conversation with someone & they think "enormity" means enormousness you are a dick if you butt in & correct them, but if you're being subjected to a a prolix op-ed by some windbag and they keep making that error there is some value in being that dick

otm

You little prolix

I am on record as prioritizing audience-awareness and context-awareness WAY above right/wrong. In any given writing/editing task, I follow the rules that I think the audience cares about. Or rather, I follow the style guidance that tends to produce text that the audience will read without being distracted either by real, or apparent, wrongness.

Also I agree with wins. You generally don't help matters by correcting casual conversation but it can be enjoyable to point and laugh at windbags.

The crankiness level of that BBC thing made me smile. I should say that the USian meaning of "power cut" is a totally different thing - it's a physical feature of the landscape (trees cut down to facilitate passage of power lines), not an electrical outage.

"power cut" sounds like an industry term for something like a Rush song from the mid-80s

it's also a Wings song from 1973!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F-ISSGbTJI

I have never heard of tree trimming around power lines as a "power cut" in my life. It's just tree trimming.

or a specific hairstyle imp

mh, no, not trimming around trees, I mean the total clearing of a swath over a mountain or through a forest or whatever. In my childhood I definitely heard this kind of thing referred to as a power cut:

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/CNX0DE/aerial-photograph-swath-through-forest-for-electrical-powerlines-alabama-CNX0DE.jpg

Maybe this is a rural or Midwestern usage? Or maybe I was just among idiots. Which is not out of the realm of possibility of course.

ahh that's fair, not used to it but I'm from a more urban area, even if in the midwest

Now I'm wondering what other people call those.

"where trees used be"

in (UK) forestry they're called firebreaks

this is more for "use other words" I guess, but the cliché "much ink has been spilled"

& the less-encountered but even worse variant "vast quantities of ink have been spilled"

No use crying

"it me"

Oh Christ I just remembered an even fucking worse version

I wonder if as much digital ink would have been spilled on this whole ...
news.ycombinator.com › item
I wonder if as much digital ink would have been spilled on this whole kerfluffle if the original article had not used the term 'bricked'. Bricking, at least in my mind, ...
creative.inspiration on Instagram: “Much digital ink has been spilled ...
https://www.instagram.com › ...
12 Likes, 1 Comments - creative.inspiration (@the.creative.mind) on Instagram: “ Much digital ink has been spilled over why Tupac ended his relationship with ...
How do you set metrics? – The Year of the Looking Glass – Medium
https://medium.com › the-year-of-the-loo...
10 Aug 2017 · Much digital ink has been spilled on this topic, so I'll keep this brief: Unless a metric truly captures the ...
Bingo Byte - Much digital ink has been spilled over the... | Facebook
https://www.facebook.com › posts
Much digital ink has been spilled over the fledgling relationship brewing between Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, not to mention all those ramifications that ...
Much digital ink has been spilled over... - Celebrities Report ...
https://www.facebook.com › posts
Much digital ink has been spilled over Disney's decision to fire Phil Lord and Chris Miller from the Han Solo Anthology movie – and it's only Thursday....
Much digital ink has been spilled lauding the 2014 Cadillac ELR's ...
www.guideautoweb.com › galleries › 20...
Much digital ink has been spilled lauding the 2014 Cadillac ELR's styling,, photo 4/13.
Filip Babovic on Twitter: "Considering how much digital ...
https://mobile.twitter.com › status
27 Sep 2017 · Considering how much digital ink has been spilt on the trolley problem this really is the appropriate ...
Endangered Languages: An Introduction
https://books.google.co.uk › books
Sarah G. Thomason · 2015 · Language Arts & Disciplines
... many new funding opportunities have arisen to support this research all over the world, much digital ink has been ...
Algorithmic Life: Calculative Devices in the Age of Big Data
https://books.google.co.uk › books
Louise Amoore, Volha Piotukh · 2015 · Political Science
... reasoning, knowledge, truth, ethics and creativity (Bynum and Moore, 1998: 1), and much (digital) ink has been ...

wins stop wasting yr breath on that

You little prolix

By way of contrast and judging purely by ILX standards (which might deviate from the norms of the larger world), I much prolix.

wins stop wasting yr digital breath on that

Much digital breath has been expelled on shit turns of phrase

rectal prolix

inherited this from my actual architect friend who is irked at the hijacking of his field's terminology for software architecture, but the word "architected" still gets under my skin

you're designing or engineering architecture, you're not architecting, my god

I hear this all the time: "arguably" when "inarguably" is the applicable word. I'm not sure if this because of a complete lack of proportionality, if people get the words confused, or if they're being treated as interchangeable. Example: a news report I heard yesterday that said Da Vinci is "arguably one of the most famous painters ever." Well, no--he's inarguably one of the most famous painters ever; if you want to say he's arguably the most famous or the greatest, then sure, you can argue about that.

I'd prefer "allegedly one of the most famous painters ever"

suspect the issue there is nervous doubling-up of qualifiers - - - "arguably" piles onto knee-jerk use of "one of the..." with neither one having really been thought through.

They're the same word tbh

the different word is "unarguably"

I mean they're not the same word but it's the same sentence

tbh inarguably is a nonsense word in that you might claim that it inarguably means inarguably but it doesn't

It's flammable and inflammable that are interchangeable, right? I can't see arguable and inarguable as anything but opposites. (Webster's treats "inarguably" and "unarguably" as variations of the same word.)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inarguable

Unarguably isn't a word and I mean fuck a Webster if he argues otherwise

unarguably means it isn't possible to have an argument, inarguably means the thing is certain so no one will argue, arguably means we live on the internet and have discovered literally nothing is either unarguable or inarguable

Yes it is

i think you'll find

well played deems

arugably

unarguably means it isn't possible to have an argument, inarguably means the thing is certain so no one will argue

Having a little trouble getting my head around this. Isn't possible to have an argument because it's so obviously certain (therefore the two words are interchangeable), or isn't possible because...what would be an example of impossibility for some other reason?

Inarguably is a mere rhetorical pose, unarguably if it existed is a technical term

arugably

arugulably

http://cdn.naturallifeenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/arugula-leaves.jpg

you're being radicchulous

Speaking of words that annoy you, I'm sorry British people, but I just can't accept calling that stuff "rocket".

it'll soon take off

Having a little trouble getting my head around this

Has a two-hour train journey to work this one out:

The spaceship hurtled into the star. "We're all dead," said the captain to the crew.

i) This was inarguable. There was no escape.
ii) A short time later, it also became unarguable.

you're being radicchulous

― ur-oik (rip van wanko), Friday, November 17, 2017 11:00 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark

i loled

lol kinder

world class, guys

normalization

I'll say it again: weaponize