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

Lewis Carroll coined the English usage

A poormanteau is a two-word graft that doesn’t quite work.

Should've gone with bearmantle. Clearly a missed opportunity.

xp

Good morning everyone except people that ask "how are we?"

maybe they are avid fans of Ayn Rand's Anthem

*checks notes*

So what did they say?

"sir, this is a wendy's"

twitter memes are a lot like those terrible summer camp "inside jokes" that circulate, where you can be "funny" by just repeating a reference to something without actually making a joke. At least those are among friends with shared experiences though. Twitter memes enable completely unfunny people to be "funny" all the time, and also enable those same people to completely choke the life out of any tweet that actually is funny or incisive.

the rhetorical "right?" at the end of a sentence. you get this a lot in TED talks, podcast interviews with an "expert"

Should be systematically swapped for 'eh? EH???'

'right' in that way - absolutely disgraceful imo

depends if it's pronounced "ray-eet??" or "roight."

'eh?': the Canadian mechanism of subliminal coercion

i have a family member (in-lawish) who when peeved and mansplainy ends every sentence with an uptick "yes?" -- which is the most would-be controlling verbal device i think i've ever encountered

(tbf it doesn't really work: the actual consequence is that as a way of coping with this none of the rest of his family ever listen to one another or anyone else, and nor does he -- tho the non-listening very much worsens his peevishness lol)

this phenomenon is no better and no worse than any other on this thread of course -- i.e. it's fine and amuses me more than it annoys me -- but i'm adding it to the data why bcz it look intersting

...yes?

'so, here's what happens, right. the first thing this species of bee does when it encounters a chlorine molecule is it begins buzzing in the opposite rhythm that it began with, right.'

I have adapted per Tom Scharpling the habit of mock-intoning "right?" after singing the lines/melody/guitar riff of a song :/

This scene always gets me. Discover it again for the first time. So beautiful. pic.twitter.com/sCrM9rfn2V

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) September 9, 2020

Millennials got the bulk memo on the word 'aesthetic'.

it's of upmost importance

I really don't get why 'unhoused' is supposed to be preferable to 'homeless' among the wokest of the woke. The latter is only a pejorative term if you want it to be – and why would you? If my aim were to be a nit-picky prick about 'unhoused', I could just as easily argue that 'those people' simply don't want to be housed or some other heinous bullshit. Whereas 'homeless' clearly means: they are bereft of a 'home' in the common sense of the word, which is fucking tragic enough. I guess you could counter that interpretation with 'they do, in fact, have a home!' (cue Tom Waits singing 'Anywhere I Lay My Head'), but that's just euphemistic wishful thinking imo, and ultimately counterproductive. I guess the best thing I can say about 'unhoused' is that it draws more attention to itself than the more familiar 'homeless', and thus – if I'm being optimistic – to the issue it seeks to name as well.

I find myself doing the rhetorical "right" sometimes and I think it's a reflexive reaction to not having an actual back-and-forth with your audience or way to check in that they understand. I think it tends to mark moments where you need your audience to be on board w/your premise before you continue, so you instinctively ask them for confirmation even though they can't respond.

Sorry that was an xpost

Or maybe I just used xpost wrong, pre-coffee. Anyway, responding to something upthread.

The latter is only a pejorative term if you want it to be – and why would you?

It's a hobby for many.

i like 'unhoused' because it emphasizes a verb - 'to house' - that implies a subject i.e. the state, or society. the state, or society are implicated. 'homeless' is like, hmm maybe i misplaced my home somewhere along the way.

Sure, but you lose some emotional gut-punchiness along the way. Not having a house is instinctively not as tragic as not having a home.

I don't have a beef with 'unhoused' btw, I just take issue with the notion that it's fundamentally more ethical than 'homeless'.

See, for instance, the NYC subreddit's ban on the latter word ('h*meless'):

https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/j056u8/moderatorial_antihmeless_posts_and_comments_are/

On the other hand, everyone seems to think that mod is completely insane so I'm just gonna file this under 'highly idiosyncratic take on language'.

I have no trouble with either term - the thing I've been hearing lately on public radio is "people who are experiencing homelessness," or "people who have experienced homelessness," which I gather is a circumlocution meant to express that a lot of people are in more fluid situations than the binary homed vs. homeless. Like, sometimes you can crash on somebody's couch, and sometimes you go to your parents' house and sometimes they let you in, and sometimes they don't. I get that, but it's pretty clunky in regular usage.

First rationally or not, "homelessness" means specific things to ppl--bums, beggars, shopping carts--the chronically or "persistently" homeless--and that's not how most people actually experience being unhoused.

Sorry, there was a "second" point but I couldn't organize my thoughts and deleted it. lol

'A homeless' is the one that annoys me, as a former homeless person.

the plural of virus is viruses, not virii

I endorse any inaccurate plurals that end in "i" if they make a sentence more fun

unless there's an even more fun possibility, like octopodes

boo

walrii

scampoes

"Thanks, PM!"

Clitorides

was 'stay safe' a thing pre-pandemic? something about it feels so insincere and useless.

I liked how in the movie "The English Patient," the posh European desert explorers said "safe journey" to one another instead of "goodbye."

Oh, you're about to fly across a forbidding desert in an airplane made of cloth, during wartime, without maps or navigation equipment. Best of luck, old chap. Safe journey.

'farewell' originally meant pretty much the same thing as 'safe journey'

xxp I don't know, I've been sincere in saying this to people in recent months that I don't stay in regular touch with. Feels right considering the circumstances.

"stay safe" means to me "I care about you and hope you will be well" - seems pretty appropriate to say?

I know if I"m on the receiving end, it's fine by me

At the end of a night my mate will say “safe home” for goodbye which I think is an Irish thing. It is good not bad, like everything mentioned in this bad not good thread

stay frosty

“world bulding”