Irrational hatred of a phrase

Try working in a prison! Every day I’ll get a prisoner come to the office & start a conversation/complaint/enquiry with, ‘here guv, obviously……’
No It’s not obvious is it, cos I don’t know what the **** your’e on about!

Or even worse, a con will come to the office & say, ‘guv, are you listening cos…..’ (cue hit on the head with extendable baton)

10 more pay days.

My US boss used to say ‘cross-pollinate’ a lot. No idea where he buzzed off to in the end.

Saying …. Genuinely …. In that Simon Cowell way …… Slap anyone who says ” I genuinely …….. ”

I do quite like sentences starting with So.

Yeah, I don’t really understand the problem with this. It’s a bit like the French “alors”. Is staring with “ok…” or “right then…” similarly irritating?

i refuse to allow the use of ‘regular’ as a size.
“what size coffee do you want, regular?”
“no, medium please”
“regular?”
“no, medium”
repeat until fade……..

I can see why this happens as ‘medium’ is a coffee roast descriptor as well as a size, it saves confusion (sometimes, anyway).

The only phrases that annoy me (and less and less now because I hear it so often) are ‘I could care less’ and when someone asks if they should do something or not but use ‘or no?’ instead or not. The former is plain wrong and means the opposite of what they mean and the latter saves exactly one letter.

“…grow the business”

Our teenage son says “like” three times or more in a sentence for no apparent reason. It’s like natch to him, innit? YOLO

Today’s irrational irritant is also coffee serving sizes. Upstairs at the Costco at my work:

Small = regular
Medium = grande
Large = uber-grande or some such rubbish, I made that one up. I just keep asking for “medium” they seem to know what I mean. Why ?? Why ?? Why ??

Although I did ask for a “flat white” once to see what they thought that was. A Latte – for the record.

“Hard working families ” as used by politicians it’s a meaningless cliché at best vacuous tripe with which they have wasted another 2 seconds of my life.

You know,
A friend of mine constantly inserts “you know” in the middle of sentences, as in “I went to the …. yesterday, you know”
No I don’t know, that is why you are telling me about it. Aaaargh

Up here, ken, it’s “ken”, ken? People who, ken, put the word “ken” in about every three words, ken, so it makes every sentence, ken, twice as long, ken, and even more difficult, ken, to follow, ye ken?

“Banter”

What is banter? Conversation?

“At the end of the day” is overused by somebody in my office. I want to stab my eyes with a biro every time i hear it.
Amazeballs, chillax and Can I Get really boil my piss.

What is banter? Conversation?

Banter is the comedy equivalent of “I’m not racist, but…”

“Touch base”

“BAU” business as usual………arrgh drives me up the wall.

Epic. A cup of coffee is not epic. A sandwich is not epic. Aargh!

‘deeply saddened’ is another that used to p1ss me off but now we just laugh when we hear it on telly/radio these days, cos to us it just shows that royalty/politicians dont really give a toss about what theyre ‘deeply saddened’ at.

“david cameron/the queen said he/she was deeply saddened at the death of xxxxx this morning……”
no (s)he wasnt, (s)he just got his/her spokesman to put out the same standard statement that they put out at every other death/disaster.

it’d be more refreshing to hear that they were ‘really upset’ or ‘gutted’, show a bit of a human side to them.

It’s not “banter” any more granddad – it’s “bantz”. See that Saturday morning blokes standing around trying to look relaxed while chatting in a kitchen show, to see some bantz in action.

Stoked – not unless a fire was involved!
Pumped up – only if you’re referring to something inflatable.
Literally – not when it didn’t happen!
Lol,rofl etc. – just rubbish especially when used with literally.
Hate – it’s used too much and downgrades the word.
No offence – you said that without the intent to offend? Really?
All the business ones. Blue sky thinking, cooking on gas, step up to the plate etc. utter tosh.
Mint – no it probably isn’t!

There are a lot more.

“I felt that” has always got on my nerves, no you f@@king didn’t grrrrr

For the record, “stoked” is a kiwi-ism from the 20th century. My grandmother used to declare that she was stoked, probably when England won the war against the Nazis. Not sure when it was adopted my American Surfer Dudes. Still sounds odd !

I can see why this happens as ‘medium’ is a coffee roast descriptor as well as a size, it saves confusion (sometimes, anyway).

I’d hazard that it’s almost certainly to normalise a larger size as the default purchase, thus generating more revenue. You want a standard coffee, that’ll be “regular”, large is larger than normal and small is smaller than normal. If the options were small, medium and large you might well just order a small in that situation. It’s a psychological version of the upselling in cinemas (“are you sure that you don’t want a large, it’s only 30p more?”).

Ie, they’re sneaky buggers.

touch base! No!

So sick.

anyone hear Lynsey Sharp on Radio Scotland an hour ago, and her new verb – ‘medal’ ?

She was talking about how special it was to ‘medal’ at the Commonwealth Games……grrr, even the presenters picked up on it !!

That’s not new, plenty of sportspeople were doing it in the run up to the Oylimpics.

“win the hearts and minds of…”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with…”
“close-knit community”
“hard-working families”
“Yadda yadda yadda”

See that Saturday morning blokes standing around trying to look relaxed while chatting in a kitchen show, to see some bantz in action.

That programme has me literally balling my eyes out.

“To die for” as in ‘that chocolate cake is to die for’. Really? It could be arranged!

That’s not new, plenty of sportspeople were doing it in the run up to the Oylimpics.

Exactly, and it’s still annoying. If she really wanted to medal she should of tied someones shoe laces together…

“Should of”? In this topic? Seriously?

My colleague’s out of office notifier states he is “out the office” but I allow him that, firstly because rightly or wrongly that’s how he would say it, secondly because he’s a big scary dude who could break my legs off if he felt like it. 🙂

‘Making progress’

Gnnnnnn! That’s down there with ‘going forward’.

Funny how none of these loathed phrases are in dialect. Normally some kind of faux-pas or trendy jargonese-meme-bollox. ‘Get in the sea’. Eh? ‘Jog on’. – ‘jog on?’ Howabout you cock off instead.

American ones are understandably considered knobbish when uttered from the mouth of a British subject. Am surrounded by Americans (wife, stepson, close friend, sister-in-law) so it’s almost rude for me NOT to say ‘dude’ once in a while. Still cringe at myself though. For their part – mercilessly mocking the way we English pronounce ‘boogie’ is aguably slim-pickings 😉

I just remembered a word, not phrase, that used to make my teeth hurt.

The word basically – when used almost exclusively as a lazy filler (or pause) in much the same way someone might pepper a sentence with ‘to be fair, like, to be fair’ has enhanced magical powers to annoy me. Even more when uttered in a Brummie accent. To my memory it appeared there circa 1980s and for some reason stuck like sh*t.

It’s as if they have slow-motion tourettes. For some it basically HAS to be said just because it, basically, well basically has to be said!

(Overheard near Smethwick):

‘Worrum sayin’ is, bicyclaaaaay, yow shud nevahrabin purrin that poz-ishun, ‘cos, bicyclaaaaay, let’s be honest, I aybin funny or nothin but, bicyclaaaaay, bee-in fair loike, yow ay really the roight blowke fertheh job, amyer? (pause) Bicyclaaaaay?’

“gridlock” when it’s not describing traffic paralysis on a city with a grid layout.

some minor traffic delays in Edinburgh do not constitute gridlock.

‘Chapeau’ is all a bit too novelty moustache/skinny jeans/hipster pretentious bollocks really.
‘Caveat emptor’ is something I find rather patronising too.
Attempting to slip either in to general conversation shrieks of trying a bit too hard to look clever.

“New and Improved”

How can something be both ‘new’ and ‘improved’ – surely it has to be one or the other?

oh – and pretty much everything else listed above!

and what about ‘bucket list’ ? where on earth did that come from, grrr 👿

@toppers – agree with you mostly on caveat emptor. IMVHO the problem comes from people who are quick to parrot the phrase but don’t actually understand the legal principle behind it eg it’s very annoying when someone comes on complaining about having been ripped off in a sale because the seller made all sorts of false claims and then someone chirps up with “caveat emptor”!

“New and Improved”

How can something be both ‘new’ and ‘improved’ – surely it has to be one or the other?

Amen, brother. Plus, all this time we’ve been using old and inferior.

What really acquires my hircine about that is, some things are new and / or improved almost all the time. Washing powder jumps to mind, every other box I buy is either new or improved or both. What the hell were you selling me to wash my clothes with ten years ago, dessicated dog eggs and gravel?

She was talking about how special it was to ‘medal’ at the Commonwealth Games……grrr, even the presenters picked up on it !!

Similarly, in events where medals don’t feature, I’m not overly keen on people “podiuming”.

Those predicators that mean the opposite of what they say, such as when someone telegraphs that they are about to disingenuously offend you by being disrespectful through saying “To be honest, no offence, but with the greatest of respect…”

Similarly to the “caveat emptor” thing, in the last few years I’ve noticed the increasing ubiquity of a narrowly and specifically defined phrase “(not) fit for purpose” being used to mean “something that doesn’t meet my expectations” which is really, really not the same thing at all. IIRC it first hit the popular consciousness when the Home Secretary used it, to describe the Home Office!

However, to truly fit the terms of the OP and be irrational, I’m going for phrases that aren’t in themselves terrible other than that they tend to be overused by some, and if you work alongside someone who overuses them, it becomes very distracting. “In line with”, “obviously”, “less” when “fewer” is what was meant, and “what good looks like” are the ones that get me.

When someone replaces a clichéd phrase with a synonym and scientific classification in an attempt, to, well, I don’t know…I’m guessing to appear witty.

I quite like the verbalisation of some nouns. It can allow for economy of speech. I don’t mind “medal” as a verb – though “podium” seems a stretch. These things come, these things go…the language will reject the ones it doesn’t like as if it has a life of it’s own sometimes. I’m sure people were wringing their hands over “telegraph” being used as a verb at one time. (I also like “telegraph” as a verb.)

“wringing.” (-:

That too. 🙂