Words I Loathed

[Judy]

I have come to despise the phrase "up for grabs." What does that mean? That you can just go up and grab whatever it is that's up for grabs? I usually associate the phrase with Jeff Probst from "Survivor," ("Immunity is up for grabs") but lately I hear well respected newscasters using it in association with the Democratic primary vote. Anyway, I'm getting sick of hearing it and wish they could come up with a more eloquent way of saying they have no idea who's going to win.

[Inky]

I've come to despise the phrase 'tipping point.' Yeah, the book did well, but now everyone who's read it is on the edge of their seats waiting for a chance to apply it in the workplace. Give it up.

Another problem for me is when anyone uses the word stalk to apply to man parts. Just call it a penis for Chris' sakes!

[Holly]

I don't know if these have been mentioned yet, but after a long week in the business world, I loathe:

Called out
Circled back
Reached out

Especially "reached out." I work with you, don't you dare touch me or I'll smack you!

[Jackie]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but the confusion over "healthy" and "healthful" is also a tad amusing, if not annoying.

Food cannot be "healthy" unless its health has been deemed good by its botanist or plant doctor. I believe people mean to say it is "healthful."

[Lisa]

I'm pretty sure I just heard the word 'drownded' in a song I've loved for years. I'm just going to pretend I didn't.

[Mallory]

I hate
'Topaz Eyes' and
'Sculpted Chest' and
'crooked smile'. I've heard them far, far, far too much. How about all y'all?

[Tara]

Ok, that's just silly. Really? Bad puns in Lovecraft? Yech.

[Colleen]

I finally found a home! As a venerable, if not seminal, member of the Language and Pronunciation Police, I have a number of pet peeves - almost all of which have been mentioned in this entertaining discussion. Thank you for reassuring me that I am not alone in my quirks. I also have typos jump off the page splat into my eyes, even if the page is not in my hand. I find it difficult to restrain my urge to call a business and tell them about their incorrect copy when "it's" is used as a possessive in advertisements (telephone books, billboards, etc.) I could continue this list ad nauseum, but will end by saying it is wonderful to have found a home, complete with a contentious family. Thanks for the laughs!

[Lorena]

"Its all he could do not to laugh/cry/whatever" that has to be the most annoying thing on the written world, so what did they do not to cry? just exist???? This was something said over and over in the Left Behind series and I have read it in other books as well ... just annoying.

[Michelle]

LOL! I agree with "utilize." It doesn't make anyone sound smarter...

[Michelle]

"She looked at him with frank, intelligent eyes." Why do strong, female characters always seem to have "frank, intelligent eyes?" And usually in novels written by men.

[Donster]

"Presently" when used to mean "currently" or "at present" instead of its real meaning.

[ROSALIE]

This isn't books but it keeps happening and I need to explode.

What's with adding "...ation.." onto every noun that comes along or word ending in 'ing'? For example..an access to a room becomes "the accessation to the room"!!! Loathing this is now my "loathation"!!!! And why does this make me feel so DISORIENTATED????? People are talking like this. It is so much angeration!!!!!!

[Toni]

Lots of truthiness to your observation!

[Sharell]

I really, REALLY hate when people say "grow" instead of "increase". Several of the companies I've worked for say things like "We need to grow our business." UGH. I don't CARE that the words are (technically) synonymous-they mean different things, okay? If you are growing something, it damn well better be a plant!

[Jennifer]

My husband loves to bug me by saying we're conversating instead of conversing. I also hate irregardless and the mispronunciaion of mischievous. It's mis-cha-vis, not mis-chee-vee-us.

[Andrea]

Authors who overuse similes. I just finished reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter. At first I found the author's use of simile to enhance her writing. By the end, I was thinking to myself, "If she writes one more time that the grass in the front yard is like ......., I am going to have to get in my car, drive to where she lives, and " well, you can guess the rest.

[Mary]

"Amazing"

I am REALLY getting tired of hearing this word used as an all-purpose descriptive.

"That color is amazing."
"My boss is amazing."
"This book is amazing."
"Dinner was amazing."

I WISH I lived in a world where everything was amazing, don't you?

[Heather]

I hate it when people pronounce "specifically." It stops being cute once the speaker turns six. Whenever someone says "pacifically," as in "I pacifically told you..." I always reply, "And I atlantically replied."
Text speak is the bane of my existance. It has destroyed my outlook for human society. About a year ago my Writing 102 professor showed us an e-mail someone in the English department received regarding taking a class despite the fact that the add deadline was a week before this e-mail was written. It had a mixture of chat and text speak and slaughtered English spelling, so one had any idea what the writer was trying to say.

[Marilynn]

Newscasters always say "pleaded guilty" instead of "pled" ~ I don't know why I always notice this.

[Mary]

Marilynn wrote: "Newscasters always say "pleaded guilty" instead of "pled" ~ I don't know why I always notice this."

Actually either one is correct; "pleaded" just seems to be more popular with the media for some reason.

[Heather]

I hate it when people end their sentences with prepositions that are useless to their statement. Example: "Where are you at?"
The other I despise is the misuse of the word irony. It is not ironic when it rains at a wedding, I don't care what Alanis says!

[Mary]

A Southern lady and a woman from New York find themselves seated next to eachother on a plane. Being the social type, the Southern lady turns to her seatmate and enquires,"So, where are you from?" The Northerner answers snottily, "I am from a place where we don't end our sentences with prepositions." Without batting an eyelash, the Southern lady replies, "OK, where are you from, BITCH?"

That joke always cracks me up!

[Holly]

Mary wrote: "A Southern lady and a woman from New York find themselves seated next to eachother on a plane. Being the social type, the Southern lady turns to her seatmate and enquires,"So, where are you from?" ..."

Well it just sounds stupid to say "From whence came you?" or something.

It is okay to end a sentence with a preposition if it prevents awkward sentence constructions.

But to say "Where are you at?" is redundant! :-)

[Holly]

Anna wrote: "It's not okay to end a sentence with a preposition to avoid an awkward construction. You should rethink the sentence to avoid the preposition altogether. Example: "Where do you live?""

Um, nope, sorry, not going to back down on this one. A number of "grammar professionals" will back me up on this:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/...

http://grammartips.homestead.com/prep...

http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar...

And on and on...

[Holly]

Anna wrote: "I am a grammar professional."

Well I, being a mere amateur, do not feel up to arguing with you. However, I do believe that I have adequate backup in this to feel that I have made my point. If you Google "sentence end preposition," almost every link that comes up will back up my assertion.

I do agree that one should try to avoid it if possible, and that ending a sentence in a preposition is often unnecessary and redundant.

However, saying it's a rule without exception is fundamentally incorrect.

[Holly]

Anna wrote: "We teach our students not trust google results unless the site is a dotorg or dotedu because anything that ends in dotcom is funded by advertizing and therefore unreliable. The Modern Language Asso..."

I don't trust Google either, except when every single link say the same thing (in fact, here is one from a .edu: http://columbiaseminary.edu/coffeetal...), and when I have myself read and heard the same thing from offline sources.

If you are talking about preserving the English language, that is a specious argument in and of itself since language is all about evolution.

ANYWAY. Let's just agree to disagree and move on. Believe me, I am very picky about grammar, too. In fact, I can't even believe I am arguing so passionately about this when I myself have grumbled over the use of "everyday" vs "every day" on some signs at work. :-)

[John]

The rule about prepositions is from Latin. Once upon a time, the educated, who all read Latin, thought that Latin was the ideal language, and English should be wrenched around to match it. In Latin, you really can't end a sentence with a preposition. It would just be weird. But English is not Latin and the rule doesn't apply. I can give you a perfectly good English sentence that ends with five prepositions (credit: Leonard Piekoff):

Suppose you were putting your son to bed, and he wanted to be read a bedtime story from a certain book that was downstairs. Suppose you go down and get the wrong book. Your son might say, "What did you bring the book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"

That is perfectly clear and comprehensible English, and I reject all inkhorn quibbles.

And why would anyone be a professional grammarian? The concept of grammar just barely applies to English.

[Esther]

John wrote: ".."What did you bring the book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?".."

What an excellent way to start my Saturday morning!

[John]

Glad you liked it.

Inkhorn weirdness is an interesting subject. Did you know English used to have a word "cwean?" Inkhorn specialists thought "queen" looked more like Latin, so that's what we use now.

[Gail]

We can always turn to Winston Churchill, who was faced with this dictum (i.e., not ending a sentence with a preposition). He is famous for replying,

This is the sort of thing up with which I shall not put.

[Patrick]

One of my teachers frequently uses a term that makes me cringe.

"Co-equal"

I don't even know if the hyphen is supposed to be there, but it sounds like it should.

Co-equal? Equal together? Why do we need that word?

[Gail]

Perhaps he believes that some are more equal than others; thus he must make it clear that he means equal.

I think it's one of those new things. One I despise is "We'll dialogue about that", or "I'm glad we had a chance to dialogue about grammar issues." Oh, are you really? I'm not. Errrrg. It's like fingers on the chalkboard.

[Summer]

Patrick wrote: "One of my teachers frequently uses a term that makes me cringe.

"Co-equal"

I don't even know if the hyphen is supposed to be there, but it sounds like it should.

Co-equal? Equal together? Why do we need that word?"

Co-equal (you will often see it without a hyphen as well) is a fairly old word (origin 1350-1400) and it is usually used for very specific things, such as to describe the traditional doctrine of the Trinity in Christendom in which the three are co-equal, co-existent, and co-eternal. Persons and things are rarely fully equal; this word is sometimes used when they are equal in multiple measurments. Related to the Trinity doctrine, I think it was chosen as a literary device. What sort of class is it that you are taking?

http://dictionary.reference.com/brows...

[Patrick]

It's World Religions (I'm a senior in high school.)

I think she used the term when we were discussing the split between Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox church.

I'm probably overreacting a bit, but it just sounds a lot like the kind of unnecessary language that George Carlin ranted about.

[John]

for-MID-able.

Stop that! It's FORM-id-able. If you can't say it right, get off my TV.

[Mary]

Isidore wrote: "catharsis

That's a word that, once some people learn its definition, for some reason they cannot stop using it. Ugh."

I always kind of liked "catharsis" after I had an English teacher define it as "an emotional enema".

[Esther]

Mary wrote: "

I always kind of liked "catharsis" after I had an English define it as "an emotional enema"

Oh yuk, now I like the word even less!

[Janelle]

Noticed someone had trouble with 'McAnally' much earlier in the thread. I come across this a lot in the Dresden Files books, and not gonna lie, I laugh. Clearly I'm about 12 years old.

This isnt so much a word as a phrase, but I hate it when authors say things like 'I let out a breath I didnt know I was holding'. I find it terribly cliche, and I know I've never done that in real life. I'm sure my lungs would tell me if I didn't know I was holding my breath.

I have terrible trouble pronouncing the names of any of Laurell K Hamilton's characters in the Merry Gentry series. I still can't reconcile 'sidhe' being pronounced as 'she', and I had a google the pronunciation for a lot of the character names XD

[Janelle]

And it REALLY bothers me in real life when people use 'addicting' in lieu of 'addictive'. Goodreads is not addicting, it is addictive. Unless it is addicting you.

I thought it was perhaps some disparity between US and UK English, but apparently not. Most of my US buddies just happen to be misusing the same word.

Correct me if Im wrong, and it is some disparity between US and UK English, but I'll stick with 'addictive'.

[Heather]

Jerry the reason "sidhe" is pronounced "she" is because it's Gaelic, not English. I remember reading it when I started reading the Tain bo Cuailnge (sorry for the improper spelling) in English and made that discovery in the pronunciation guide.

[John]

"Sidhe" is Irish, not Gaelic. Gaelic isn't used to refer to the Irish language. It refers to a Scottish language.

[Heather]

Ah, thanks for the correction, John. Sometimes the lines are blurred.

[Janelle]

I know it's Irish, Im not stupid :P I just still can't wrap my head around it though

[Heather]

Sorry if I sounded insulting, Jerry, but I wasn't sure if you knew. It was hard for me too. It irritated me to remember that "tain" rhymes with "con" not "stain."

[[deleted user]]

uhh...what is the "C-word?"

[Christy]

Rilee wrote: "uhh...what is the "C-word?""

Cunt

[[deleted user]]

thanks...but what does that mean?

[John]

It refers to a woman's vulva. Also used as a general purpose insult to women. In Great Britain, used to insult anyone, male or female. Considered extremely vulgar. Don't let your mom hear you say it.

[[deleted user]]

haha. okay thanks..