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

The Chiffons recorded the republican party first.

"this human"
Random IG post: Had the best takeout cocktails with this human

Acceptable if the speaker is from another species, imo.

The baboon/human divide is real

acceptable if the activity in question is something one commonly does with a non-human: e.g. had a chill trip to the vet with this human or had to get up early to take this human outside to pee

Maybe one for the co-workers thread, but:

A colleague who regularly 'pings' emails and refers to rough drafts a 'starter for ten' has just used the phrase 'long-term quarterbacking of delivery strategy' in a presentation.

I generally like this person but their jargon is unbearable.

do they also say things like

"now, this doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we want"

"although we believe this is how it will work, we are still massaging the details a bit"

"we have a lot of balls up in the air"

“Can you begin to socialise the details of this new process with your teams ?”

'starter for ten' is... horrifying

I would be too tempted to insert intentional malapropisms into my daily speech with them to see if they picked up on it

i don't even get 'starter for ten'

"Here's your starter for ten [points]" is how Jeremy Paxman introduces the first question in each batch of questions in University Challenge.

ahhhh gotcha, yeah that is 'burn with fire'

Probably an okay joke the first time someone thought of it. As jargon though...

I would be too tempted to insert intentional malapropisms into my daily speech with them to see if they picked up on it

― he said that you son of a bitch (Neanderthal), Monday, February 15, 2021 8:32 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

HAHAHAHA!

ctrl-f "meggings"

okay delete thread, start over

meggings for muggles ...

lol “starter for ten” is absolutely baked into my workplace to the point that few even see it as jargon.

Do they follow up with "no conferring"?

anytime someone answers a question in class and adds an ",Alex" at the end I kick them out of class

Maybe one for the co-workers thread, but:

A colleague who regularly 'pings' emails and refers to rough drafts a 'starter for ten' has just used the phrase 'long-term quarterbacking of delivery strategy' in a presentation.

I generally like this person but their jargon is unbearable.

Is this in the US? Who would 'get' starter for ten in the US?

It's in the UK, which makes the 'quarterbacking' thing even more baffling - nobody involved in the project is American.

do they also say things like

"now, this doesn't mean we have carte blanche to do whatever we want"
"although we believe this is how it will work, we are still massaging the details a bit"
"we have a lot of balls up in the air"

I think I've heard 'balls up in the air' but thankfully not the first two. Yet.

lol “starter for ten” is absolutely baked into my workplace to the point that few even see it as jargon.

my sincerest condolences

how about "teeing things up?" ... like

co-worker: we should tee up this new project
me: i don't really know much about golf?
co-worker: huh?
me: what does "tee up" actually mean?

we work for a non-profit that helps low-income people and artists -- why are we using golf metaphors?

lol ok I do that one now and then but only cos half the time I forget the word "staging"

at least you work for/with people who aspire to have the wealth and leisure time to play golf

"We should prime the canvas on this project."

staging is fine. most people know what that means.

If that is the measure then idk 95% of this thread is fine tbh

idk it's mostly contextual in terms of the inconsistency / disjunction between who is speaking and to whom and what the context is. If you are using language that because of the audience and/or context that is unclear or requires the audience to do extra cognitive steps that really shouldn't be required ... that is the majority of what annoys me. Cognitive steps in a "punching down" type of way that I feel is part of jargon's function -- like it connotes a professionalism and higher status than the average person.

teeing up can also refer to the rather more proletarian sport of tee-ball

Or maybe I'm just drinking my own bathwater here.

There are some sharks in the water but really this is the long pole in the tent

heh let me circle back to you on that in a while and i'll ping you when there's a deliverable

sarahell, just make sure we answer the mail

Theres little that teeing up does ito punching down to the uninformed that staging doesnt also do tbh

imo, imo obv

I'm just going to let these posts marinate for a bit before I make them actionable.

We're going to need to be choiceful, going forward.

When I left government contracting a while back, I thought I would be free of military jargon but alas, it is not to be.

I am trying to instill "lessons learned" in lieu of "after-action" or - ugh - "hotwash."

"postmortem" is not a military metaphor but I still don't want to use it. Like, no one and nothing is dead, we're just talking about soliciting opinions on what went right v. wrong.

Unfortunately all of those terms are still in active use, even in the private sector

You'd think that a phrase which sounds almost like 'hogwash' wouldn't take off.

It may be a specifically Air Force term - I hadn't heard of it until recently

Rhonda??

Reductio ad absurdum is a good one

Rhonduction ad absurdum

ymp you may think 'postmortem' is bad but just wait until you work somewhere that wants to discuss the 'learnings' from a project i.e. things that didn't work. when you discuss these learnings please feel free to refer to the actions you might take next time as 'builds' i.e. 'um i have a couple of builds on that one' and everyone else at the table's like uh oh here we go

You will be heartened to know i annihilated candidates for buzzwording me at interview last week

where did you dispose of their remains?

Im a midranking civil servant when i leave the room i presume someone scurries in to handle it

'starter pack' as an adjective. come off it.

i annihilated candidates for buzzwording me at interview last week

I'm enormously heartened by this, as predicted.

Okay maybe this is more a "use other words please" than an "annoy the shit out of me," but:

"That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works."

...is approaching the status of being played out like an 8-track.

What everyone really needs to accept is that it’s horribly grating to hear anyone say anything that anyone else has ever said before

― devops mom (silby), Friday, July 6, 2018 6:18 PM (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Wednesday, December 12, 2018 9:41 AM (one year ago)

― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Monday, March 2, 2020 11:05 AM (eleven months ago)