Books I Loathed discussion
Words I Loathed
message 351:
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Jason
(last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:48PM)
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Nov 16, 2007 11:35AM
Wow...I think avocado and guacamole just became my new favorite words.
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Mark, you have reminded me of a past employer's committee of directors and VPs called the "Facilities Utilization Committee." No, I am not making this up. Not sure how that one got by them, especially since it was in an acronym-happy industry. I can just imagine the meeting minutes ... or the conversations. "Say, are you headed to the FUC meeting? Yeah? Me too!" :-)
The use of the term "cunt" in anything but dark jest should usually be met with: "Our conversation is at an end. Your groveling can commence."
I know a woman who every Monday at the end of the day tells me "See you next Tuesday," as in CU Next Tuesday. I think that therefore she shouldhave to grovel me. It might be difficult in this case, because usually I can't help laughing when she tells me that. But I would like to be groveled, I think, unless it would hurt.
There are a lot of weird acronyms out there. I always say, beware of TLAs. That means Three Letter Acronyms. Once I saw PMS used, and not for its usual meaning. I'm sure there are many others.
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I have a programmer friend who attended the WUSS (Western Users of SAS) convention and stole a lot of swag. I tried to get some but he wouldn't give it up.
SAS?huh..."SAS?" is too short to post by itself...
Mark, I will never look at guacamole the same way again. Where, praytell, did you learn that fabulous piece of obscure information?
Guacamole is really good with little donkeys. Burritos.
in response to all the people who hate the c-word so much... it sucks to have words like that used as insults but i'm all for reclaiming them. you should check out inga muscio's book, "cunt: a declaration of independence." it's changed a lot of girls' lives.
I use prolly occasionally in informal writing, like email, but only when I'm being funny. And yes, it is because I'm being lazy. :)
I am guilty of using prolly in emails but only to my sister.......I also use cuz instead of because. :( <----- is evil incarnate.
What, smiley faces? I like 'em. I'm also guilty of using LOL way too much.
I'm sure my absence had some of you shaking your head (right? RIGHT?); anyway, I've recovered (*cough*), thank you. I'll post as I read (since otherwise I won't remember)...Mark: upon my remark regarding her lack of a sense of humor, my sister retorted, "Just because I don't think YOU'RE funny, doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humor."Which shut me up AND put me in my place.
Tara: I was forbidden to use "fart", too! I had to say "poot".Oh, yeah. THAT'S better.
Tara: I've been "saying" your name wrong...I'm glad to have it fixed, though now it'll take getting used to (you've been "TERR-uh"); "TARR-uh" is prettier, even.
Hadas: Cock-garage? Hah! Next time I go to the girlie-doctor (gynecologist), I'm gonna say, "Hey, my cock-garage is off; couldja take a look at it?"
Message 435, et. al: Okay, confession: I love any permutation of "'tard". I do recognize this comes from the most juvenile part of me, and could not only offend some, but might hurt; I would never, EVER do that intentionally (I AM a mother, after all)...but "celebutard" is just too delicious to let go...
Re: the frequency of abuse by hoardes of frat-boys: depends on where you live, to be sure. You might be surprised, Hadas; gotta keep in mind, there's a new bunch every year, so that sort of behavior never gets old and fades away...
Whew, go out of town and out of reach of a computer for a few days and the catch-up time mounts! Bronwyn, I agree with you on the lazy, shortened terms. The one that really gets me, and I will see pop up everywhere right about now, is Xmas. Because 1)how does X transtlate to Christ or Chris?? and 2)it just seems a bit, for lack of a better word, respectful. I don't know if that is how I want to phrase it, but right now that is all I can come up with.
Xmas really bugs me too, for religious reasons. I don't like taking Christ out of Christmas. But to answer your question, I think the X is like a criss-cross, and that's why they shorten "christ" to "criss" to "x".
The book Triumph of the Sun describes the woman's genitalia as "a quivering quimmy like a ripe fig" and the man gets "the white pillar of his manhood". I think I threw up in my mouth a little but its made for tons of laughs when my friends and I get together.
Silly fools! The X in Xmas is the preferred method by evil secular liberal atheists to take the Christ out of Christmas!
Yeah Sarah, I mean, I figured about the Criss-Cross connection, but it just seems so convoluted a path to get there. Brendan, that is funny.
To utilize more verbicized words...I work in the IT industry second only to the military in vocabulariation, acronymization and verbicizationalism. I had a co-worker who thought the sun shined out of her - um - brain(?) and she would talk about capacitization (once even said capacitizationizing). Yep, for those of you at a loss, we were trying to ensure that we had only the amount of workers we needed to get the job done. Not too many, not too few.
I learned eventually to write down the words she made up so that I could attempt to avoid exploding with laughter.
no offense, but i think we pretty much removed Christ from Christmas ages ago. at least on a collective societal level. Avoiding "Xmas" isn't going to de-commercialize the holiday anymore than manger scenes in malls.
I've heard that the Greek word for Christ starts with the letters Chi and Rho, for us written XP, and so the abreviation for Christ is often shortened to an X. So the X is truly standing for, not "crossing out" Christ. Or, maybe that's just a Christian urban myth ;)
Capacitization? Where do people come up with these things? This is making me laugh hard. I so hate stupid words. My pet peeve (as I've written about before) is using nouns to make verbs. I just remembered one that aggravates me. I'm a mental health clinician and have recently heard that "he suicided due to marital problems." He WHAT? I guess we don't commit suicide anymore; we suicide. I'm throwing up. No, maybe I'll suicide.
For the record, the "X" part comes from a Greek abbreviation and was used by early Christians to denote "Christ." It's a very valid use and in no way is an attempt to take Christ out of Christmas. So it may be lazy, but it is in no way disrespectful. :-)See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas for more detail.
Robbie--Aha, I should have read further I see. :-)My post provides some backup to that, so it's not an urban myth. I went to a protestant school growing up and my Dad was fairly scholarly about the Bible stuff, so I can backup what wiki says, too.
Jason, speak for yourself. I personally haven't removed Christ from Christmas.Robbie and Holly, thanks for the info. That's interesting.
Hm, good to know about the X, but I still don't like Xmas, maybe it is an aesthetic thing, Christmas just isn't the same as Xmas! And I am not a religious person, but I am somewhat of a traditionalist. Guess that is it.
i hate when people purposefully mispell words in names of businesses that are preschool or daycare related. Or just posters at school for like book fairs.Kinder Kare
Skool is Kool
Reading is Kool come to our Skool book fair
i mean wth we're in school...how do we expect our kids to spell when we can't.
I try really hard not to use ty for thank you...if you're going to thank someone...have the courtesy to type it out. unless it's a text message.
This thread is hilarious! Thanks to one and all for making me laugh until tears ran down my face.A word I actually love but I bet would end up on a bunch of folks' loathe lists is adolesce (to go through adolescence).
Nascent bugs me. And I despise any word that's got an extra syllable in it (orientate instead of orient, for example...I know that one's been mentioned).
Text-message-speak is horrendous, and it seems to be trickling increasingly into all sorts of other contexts. Reading Londonstani was a mistake I never intend to repeat...I hate LOL, and WTF, and IMHO, and all the rest of them. Though I do enjoy making up my own and confusing people with them.
And there's not much I hate more than the use of "quotes" to "emphasize" or "draw attention" to your words, seen most often on handwritten signs trying to sell me something. "Great" tomatoes, very "tasty"!
It may have been covered already, but "impact" as a verb-from-noun is one I really dread seeing: cars don't "impact", teeth do!Lisa's quotation-mark-laden example above would leave me to conclude that "Great tasty tomatoes" was a euphemism for something salacious.
The thing I loathe more than anything else when people put an apostrophe in a plural word. I see it almost every time I pass a fast food restuarant nowadays...TWO CHEESEBURGER'S FOR $2!
Grrrrr...
Okay, it's probably not fair to poke fun at sportswriters trying to tackle legal/procedural language. This Mitchell Report thing...well, sportswriters aren't known for the breadth of their knowledge and vocabulary. But this can't possibly be right:"In that case, Selig handed out the punishments with agreement from the union, which has since grieved Guillen's suspension at his insistence."
Does one "grieve" a grievance? It sounds like the players union wore black armbands for a day to express their feelings of sadness and loss that Jose Guillen was suspended for 15 days due to past use of human growth hormone, not that they submitted a formal disagreement with the sanctions imposed.
Another thing that bugs me is when people say "hung" when they meant to say "hanged." I know it sounds wrong, but if someone is dangling from a rope around their neck, it's "hanged."
another example of turning a noun into a verb/adverb. god, I HATE IT! directors are "lensing" films, writers are "authoring books", mothers and fathers are "parenting", people are "suiciding". no, no, a thousand times no!!! i'm off to "calendar" now as it's a new month.
Ooh, Sean, I love words that use a different form in one specific context, like 'hanged'. I seriously mourn the passing from the baseball lexicon of the phrase, "flied out to left." 'Flew out' just doesn't have the same only-in-baseball ring to it. He 'flew out' of LAX, not to the center-fielder.
I hate the words "babyish" and "sophisticated". I blame the Babysitters' Club books. Ann M. Martin just loved those words.
In musical culture I hate the term "rawk" used in place of rock, as in "rawk 'n' roll duuuude." If someone uses it in a review I pretty much automatically don't like the band, the writer, and the magazine. Also, people who don't know that the 'n' in rock 'n' roll has apostrophes before and after it make me put my hands in my pockets so they don't strike out at someone on their own. If you're a music critic that should really be something that you have a handle on.
In music subcultures, the use of an 'x' in place of 'ks' in words like punx and thanx make me glad I don't have a mohawk anymore.
In music subcultures, the use of an 'x' in place of 'ks' in words like punx and thanx make me glad I don't have a mohawk anymore.
Sean, The hanged/hung situation has always been a pet peeve of mine! I hung a picture on the wall. The guy hanged himself!
to Christen, regarding signageHA! i'm a graphic designer, and i did two of my internships at environmental graphics/architecture firms, and let me tell you, the fact that signage is NOT a word irks me to this day. seriously. because saying that i designed "signs" just sounds silly and juvenile, but to say i designed SIGNAGE sounds very, i don't know, professional. at least, in a resume it sure looks a lot better. i actually didn't realize it was an industry made-up word until i couldn't get the spell check to recognize it, even on a mac.
the funny thing is, the company i work for now makes up words willy-nilly. i think it's kind of hilarious, but it sure makes a lot of work for our QA department.
oh, and irregardless is my personal language equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. it makes me want to throttle people who say it. not that i should talk, i'm guilty of using nouns as verbs with impunity (i blame it on the legitimization of "googling" as a real word).
Xysea, i know your comment was from way back in september (regarding cooter as a turtle and how offensive it is when used as a term for lady parts), but i just had to share a little phrase my gay former roomate used to use constantly. we both watched a LOT of television, and whenever someone (male or female) was taking up too much room on the couch, he would tell them to "scooch your cooch," which i found terribly amusing. i even find myself slipping back into it now and then with my boyfriend and male cat. it's just so much funnier than a simple "scoot over."
I just found this thread so forgive if I repeat earlier comments. Re sportscasters and their use of language....defense is a noun, defend is a verb, defensed is not. Also I cannot stand the use of disrespect as anything other than a noun (those nails on a chalkboard effect!).As for "scooching" that made me laugh b/c just about every woman I know understands where you always hear the words "scooch down" and then "slide back".
Oh, you guys are just mean. What is the English Language if not a bunch of borrowed, mispronounced, evolved, and combined words!Try using suffixes and prefixes, but no root word: "Ining", "Levism", "Mandor." Its fun to hear them thrown about during a meeting.
Oh, Brad, I feel sorry for you and whatever town you live in that music criticism is that horrifying! Or are you reading the national music press? Have they deteriorated that badly since I gave up on them years ago (mostly for not even knowing of the existence of the bands I was listening to)?I do use the word "rawk" when I write about music (mostly just to amuse myself and my friends, I don't do it professionally), but it's always derogatory. As in, "...sounded like some retro-big-hair RAWK band, with a singer using that horrible RAWK voice...". I imagine I would shake my head in pity at anyone who used it in seriousness.
Oh, god, I just came across another phrase I hate. You're reading along in a story (I won't mention what I'm currently reading, because the jury's still out on whether I like the rest of it or not, though I'm condemning this sentence right this minute), and suddenly your first-person narrator pulls back the camera, and says:"And that's how we came to be..." doing whatever it is that drives the next plot point. Oh, so unnecessary. Did you think I forgot what the characters were doing in the rest of the paragraph? That I'd get confused when whatever happens next actually happens, and the characters are doing whatever it is they're doing at the time? Did you think you didn't explain clearly enough what the characters were up to? Because a) you did. And b) if you thought you didn't, you should rewrite, not recap.
(And it didn't help one bit that the offending sentence ended with "...in the purple dusk." I'm sure there's a time and a place for "the purple dusk" but it's not at the end of a sentence that already started with a tired cliche.)
I don't know if this has been said anywhere else, but if there's one word I hate most, it's PHONY. XP
Laurell K Hamilton posted the first chapter of her upcoming book. The horror of this reminded me of one of the phrases she overuses that I despise. I can not stand when she says that something "just flat does it" for her.
Books I Loathed
Books mentioned in this topic
The Blonde Identity (other topics)Medusa's Sisters (other topics)
Who We Are Now (other topics)
Under the Influence (other topics)
North of Nowhere (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Stacey Ballis (other topics)Emily Giffin (other topics)
