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

Thanks, TS.

I love eat/ate/no crumbs comments.

*checks queer etymology for dummies*

Whenever a new piece of slang emerges into the mainstream it's safe to assume it's taken from either aave, queer culture or (more recently, and regrettably) incel culture

A lot of the terms complained about here are terms that do originate from various minority communities and honestly the age difference on ilx is really glaring at these times, not necessarily in terms of “wow ilx is really old” because age doesn’t matter unless you insist on unironically doing the Grandpa Simpson bit (which many of you seem to, fuck knows why) but in terms of how some of you just do not have any familiarity with evolving use of language or slang and it’s everyone else’s problem, not yours.

I like though don’t use “ate/left no crumbs” myself but through a younger friend I am ALL IN on the various uses of cook, e.g:

cook that fraud

he cooked

let him cook

I don’t know particular origins of this but I do know I picked this up off a younger friend and use it constantly now & it rules tbh. Broadening your lexicon, it’s not a bad thing (unless it’s corporate speak tbh)

twitch streamers and their chat also produce a lot of slang. and tiktok of course

I like hearing about ones itt that I haven't actually encountered anywhere (increasingly the case not just for age but for considerably curtailed sm use). I've also been enjoying 'let x cook' which I'm guessing you could trace back over ten years as per Breaking Bad popularity but somehow it feels like it only reached saturation point much more recently.

i get my understanding of most of these from football twitter

its enough, quite enough

with loads of Americans following football teams now it’s really funny to see Americans on social media using classic football terms like “bottle job”, “Citeh” and so on.

Also, they all say “nonce” now. The flattening of regional language facilitated by social media, in this essay I will

My friend mentioned previously texted me re her worries re some Liverpool match(she’s a fan, I’m not) and said “I would almost rather have City score and lose us the title than listen to those bottle job gunners tell us this is their year”.

Like! You were born in Boston! It’s very funny (to me).

still not buying the "hate the game not the player" argument on the basis that separating the speaker from the words they speak in a peeve thread about language use is not possible. it's baked in. suggesting otherwise seems disingenuous at best. more likely no one wants to be seen as a hater of powerless people.

and it’s everyone else’s problem, not yours
otm

had a perfectly decent night at work last night btw and asked people if i could get something started for them with absolute abandon and impunity

nice

"that eats" is just objectively bad, too much crossover with conflicting expressions like "eat shit" or "eat me" etc

"let him cook" is of course immortal at this point

also i think a lot of the appropriation of language from other cultures has to do with us living in a text-heavy environment. much easier to appropriate language in writing than to speak it out loud irl. (to gyac's point)

“I would almost rather have City score and lose us the title than listen to those bottle job gunners gooners tell us this is their year”

fixed

Oh Matt you are not going to like what the term “gooners” means now.

Separating the speaker from the words they speak in a peeve thread about language use is not possible. it's baked in. suggesting otherwise seems disingenuous at best. more likely no one wants to be seen as a hater of powerless people.

I think it really is possible and I resent the implication that anyone saying so actually just hates powerless people. We are literally talking about a two word phrase here. I wasn't even imagining servers saying it when I thought about it - my first scenario was someone saying it to me when welcoming me to their home and it still felt weird. I imagined myself welcoming guests at work because it is part of my role to greet visitors and offer them drinks and I always say either just Welcome! or Welcome to "place of employment". I don't really understand how this has blown up into something bigger than a simple phrase that has supposedly become popular.

lt isn’t possible, you are making bad excuses

That's fine you can think that but I truly believe it is and when I say I think the phrase sounds odd there is no larger meaning to that. At all. This is not about the people who say it and it never was. It's about a stupid phrase and nothing more. Tbc I am one of these powerless people in my job and I grew up in the hospitality industry and was a server for years so if anything I try to be extra respectful with any kinds of customer service ppl.

i think theres been a strong element of overzealous language policing on this one and the attack element on service workers- jobs most of us will have done in our lives- has been massively overstated

we all get an opinion on it, there's mine

ofc i strongly defend the right of all to language police in this of all threads

trying not to shit-stir here, but I actually thought the start for all this was a different post--not by ENBB--that was explicitly about servers

I kind of want to start a "curious phrases" thread as there are a couple of local usages I've been intrigued by lately. Everyone in Montreal (yes, I know literally tout le monde ici) has been saying "if ever" lately, and I can't figure out if it's a french crossover or I just never noticed this common expression before

you're not sure if its ever been commonly used before, if ever?

lol fair, but it's used more specifically like this:

"If ever there's interest"
"I am exhausted but if ever you were available"
"Lemme know if ever there's anything else I can help with"
"no rush, if ever you can send it along by Monday"

two of those are direct quotes from a francophone friend, but the others are from anglophones

thats quute normal but it is a bit jane austen, possibly via richard curtis, right?

xp start that thread so I can link my favourite Wikipedia page of all time

xps gentlemen, you can’t police language in here, the language cop thread

deems otm. also, this thread gets ridiculous quite often with the phrases that get complained about but why do we really believe there's a deep-seated contempt for servers on ILX of all places? it feels a lot like ENBB and/or everyone else being criticized for 'hating service industry workers' are having a lot projected onto them. why are we having the "This is what you REALLY meant" Olympics in here?

95% of this thread is making fun of things said in a work environment to begin with.

separating the speaker from the words they speak in a peeve thread about language use is not possible. it's baked in.

LL is 100% correct here

except the assumption is that the disdain for the phrase is disdain for everyone who belongs to the industry in which the phrase is heard, which is....a huge leap in logic.

Neanderthal otm

Oh Matt you are not going to like what the term “gooners” means now.

I looked this up and hmm yes, actually it's not too bad a metaphor for Arsenal's wait for a league title

like...I can only speak for me, but my initially assumption was that the phrase "welcome in" came from corny managers and executives making six figures, and was forced upon service workers to say, similar to how people who work at Firehouse are told they have to say "welcome to Firehouse".

and we spend most of our time in this thread mocking the out of touch nature of corporate speak.

except the assumption is that the disdain for the phrase is disdain for everyone who belongs to the industry in which the phrase is heard, which is....a huge leap in logic.

― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Friday, March 15, 2024 10:12 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Exactly.

Love to be lectured by people who would collapse if they had to do the work that people like LL and I do on busy nights at the bar/restaurant.

The phrase sounds fine to me, but one of the things I (lol) appreciate about this thread is that there are a lot of people from other English speaking places with regional differences in language! I totally respect and understand ENBB feelings about it and don’t see it as anything other than something she perceived as an awkward turn of phrase.

except the assumption is that the disdain for the phrase is disdain for everyone who belongs to the industry

I think it's a fair assessment, as I haven't really seen anyone who dislikes the phrase explain why they dislike it in linguistic terms* that would eliminate "the people who say it" as a contributing factor. if you're saying the usage is wrong but can't tell me why it is wrong purely in terms of language use, are you really talking about words?

like, if you ask me if I am racist I will say no, I am not. that doesn't mean you are wrong if you point out something I do is racist, and when that happens I should probably consider your take, because "I don't think I'm a racist, so nothing I do can be racist" isn't great.

*someone said the preposition was unnecessary, but... redundant and unnecessary words are used constantly and without critique in English, so that doesn't hold water as an explanation (for example, few of you are probably angry that I said "doesn't hold water" instead of the more concise "holds no water" that omits the redundant verb "do" and requires an apostrophe).

doesn't require an apostrophe

Love to be lectured by people who would collapse if they had to do the work that people like LL and I do on busy nights at the bar/restaurant.

Xposts - That is exactly why though - it is redundant and sounds unnecessary. Of course there are other examples but in this particular instance it seems unnecessary and sounds very odd. Sorry that holds no water but I do think that's exactly why it sounds a bit funny.

why only in this instance? if it is redundant and unnecessary you don't like, surely the most frequently redundant and unnecessary usages in English (like meaningless do) would make up the bulk of this thread. they don't.

It's not only in this instance but that's the one that was brought up and that everyone was discussing.

why did you include the unnecessary and redundant "it's not only in this sentence but" in your post, I thought you cared about eliminating such things

why did you include the unnecessary and redundant "it's not only in this sentence but" in your post, I thought you cared about eliminating such things

f. hazel, you're really going to compare this to racism? That's a bad (and problematic) analogy for a lot of reasons.

This is a thread about annoying phrases. It often involves phrases heard in the workplace. I and others have brought out own examples.

I would wager many itt bringing their own examples are in thankless jobs where they are underpaid and governed by toxic management.

I worked in the service industry for years and left it purely due to the toxicity and it's obviously gotten worse since then. That's not lost on me.

That doesn't mean "mentioning the phrase 'welcome in' is annoying" is an assault on the service industry.

But this is also a thread where it was believed that I actually wanted to ban restaurants so y'know what, fuck this thread

Also it's pretty gross to make ENBB a whipping person in all this

(and I was on team "who fuckin cares" when it comes to the phrase!)

omg

my specific bouef with her posts was the claim that you could separate disdain/contempt for the phrase from disdain/contempt for the speaker. that's just not true. suggesting that is disingenuous. if ANYONE would simply admit that they have unacknowledged/unexamined disdain for service workers (evidenced throughout this gargantuan thread) we could stop having this conversation.

the language is a proxy. like dress codes are a proxy.

I reject the idea that I have unacknowledged disdain for service workers because I find a particular turn of phrase strange. That is actually an insane and completely out of bounds claim to make. I will state again that I have been a busgirl, a waitress, a hostess and a bartender. I have worked 3 coffee shops. My mother's career was being a hostess. I have considered going back into hospitality so that is just not true. I can think a phrase sounds funny without having contempt for someone using it.

this is not about you, specifically

thanks for calling me insane though

if ANYONE would simply admit that they have unacknowledged/unexamined disdain for service workers (evidenced throughout this gargantuan thread) we could stop having this conversation.

"Confess! Confess!"