Fads -- stupid expressions

[scottcsmith]

What are some popular expressions that you hate? Here are a couple of mine:

"My bad." WTF? I just don't get it. As a writer it makes me shudder just to hear it. Where's the verb???

"At the end of the day." This is a corporate expression, or used in motivational speeches. Stupid.

[Capn Sunshine]

1. "going forward"

there's really no other way to go.
a useless cliche, very popular in financial reports.

[woofless]

23. I always say "Go forward" while giving driving directions

instead of go straight. Cuz I don't want to go straight.

[Kanary]

2. "Get a life", "Grow a skin"

Very demeaning, and sure to create distance.

Kanary

[nini]

3. Whatever....

'Whatever' is the epitome of rudeness and only proves you have nothing intelligent left to answer someone with.


the 'My Bad' one drives me nuts.

urgh

[Kamika]

4. Get over it

I'm sure you heard that one

[elvisbear]

5. Ending a statement with " 'Nuff said ". aaarrrrgh I hate that.

[david_vincent]

6. "Went missing" & "gone missing"

You *never* heard these expressions up until about ten years ago. As far as I can tell, they came over the border from Canada. I first heard them used by an anchor on CBC's evening news program The National, although somehow it doesn't seem to me that it was Knowlton Nash - possibly a holiday stand-in. My guess is that they came from Nova Scotia.
What's wrong with using "disappear"? Is "went missing" somehow more informative? It's so idiotic it drives me crazy!
Man departs from his home, hat in hand, calls out: 'Bye honey! I'm going missing!

[monkeyboy]

7. The ultimate throw-away, dumbassed expression: "It's all good"

WTF is that? WTF does it mean? My son says it and I could just about slap his head off. Talk about a know-nothing, mentally slothful, dumbassed use of the English language.

[Shakespeare]

8. ".....wait for it...."

Makes me want to physically hurt anyone who says (or writes) it.

[toddzilla]

9. I'm guilty of "deal with it"

i can't help it, i get sick of anal retentive people going on and on about something they can't change. just fucking deal with it and move on!

[Kanary]

10. that's fine, as long as

you aren't ever in need of compassion yourself.

Kanary

[toddzilla]

22. ever hear of moderation?

once again someone has taken a single statement and turned it into some type of all-encompassing life philosophy.

[Kanary]

28. Know what rude is?

I've just spent too many years giving and giving and giving to people, who turn around and flip me off with insensitive stuff like "Get over it".

I just don't put up with it anymore.

So, again I say.. as long as you don't have a need to receive compassion yourself, then you'll be OK.

But don't expect to flip people off with stuff like that, and have 'em come back and give you warm fuzzies.

Kanary

[toddzilla]

33. I would have thought that one would be able to infer

from my original post that i'm not talking about someone who is homeless or a victim of abuse or whatever. I'm talking about stupid, nonsensical crap that people go on and on about that really has no importance, hence the "anal retentive" qualifier. I don't meet someone who has lost their job recently and just spout off "deal with it"


If you stub your toe and go on about it for 2 hours, or your french fries were too dark for you, but not burnt, i'm going to tell you to deal with it and shut the hell up already.


get the difference? It's called context, and moderation.

[Nihil]

34. As a side point ...

... I find it amusing that "anal retentive people" are bad:
I'd be pretty unhappy if the guy next to me on the bus *didn't*
have a retentive anus ...

Yeeewwwwwccchhh

[James T. Kirk]

11. "I'm lovin' it."

It's a McDonald's jingle and I'm actually hearing people use it in converstations. I'm hatin' it.

[Kanary]

12. Hi, James T. Kirk!

Welcome to D.U.!



Kanary

[Swede]

20. Fascinating.

Welcome to DU.

[James T. Kirk]

32. Thanks, Kanary and Swede! Glad to be here!

[Archae]

13. This real dandy!

"Loose" for "lose."

"I dont wanna loose my car keys."

It's (bleep)-ing LOSE, losers!

[DrWeird]

14. "islamist"

Might as well wear a dunce cap when you use that one.

[Malikshah]

40. ???

Actually it's term I've seen used numerous times in the field of modern studies of the Middle East-- fundamentalist is inaccurate, radical is inaccurate-- Islamist (although it's so artificial) is clearest w/o being value laden

Out of the mouths of Islamaphobes, though, it does come across akin to "Muhammadan"

[Qutzupalotl]

15. Don't go there.

Don't even.

[jokerman93]

16. Not!

I can't stand the unoriginal mall-rat sarcasm of -- Not!!!

That famous brainless post-declarative nullifier...

Where did that come from anyway? I wasn't in the US for a few years and when I came back, everyone was using it. Even educated adults. Made me feel all...dirty...inside!

[bbernardini]

17. But "at the end of the day"...

...is the basis for one of the greatest Spock's Beard's tunes ever, if not one of the greatest rock tunes of all time! It can't be bad!

[Cat Atomic]

18. I could care less.

That means... you care *some*... argh.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

19. god I hate 'my bad'

and have cringed every time i heard it. who the fuck started it?

[Swede]

21. I heard that.

Know what I'm sayin'

[Drifter]

24. Too much information ...

I made the mistake of using this line once on a camping trip. Another then proceeded to over use it for three days straight. Ugh.

Cheers
Drifter

[HEyHEY]

25. "Well this is it"

[Obamarama]

26. Basically.....

UGH....I want to hurt people who say it.

And since we're getting these annoyances off our chests, one other "biz-babble" word that drives me over the edge is "collaborate," when the writer or speaker clearly means "COOPERATE." People or entites that don't see eye to eye on things "collaborate." People who see eye to eye on things and are already in agreement "cooperate."

[Limbought]

27. Ya Know .......

It drives me crazy when people insert "ya know" at the end of every sentence.

[Kanary]

29. Hi Limbought!

Welcome to D.U.!



Kanary

[Limbought]

31. Thank You Very Much ........

I'm looking forward to posting here.

[RandomKoolzip]

30. "Thinking outside the box."

What box?! Where is this mythic box of which you speak? I hate corporate speech...

other ones:

"I'm just blue skying."
"Don't carrot-and-stick me!"
"We're going to green-light your project."
"It's do-able."


Whenever I hear these expressions, I want to strangle the next asshole wearing a suit and tie I see walking down the street....

[kanrok]

35. "Irregardless"

It makes me cringe every time I hear it. A phrase I hate to hear, usually because the person saying it has no conception of its true meaning is "take responsibility for your own actions."

[trof]

36. "the fact of the matter is..."

Every time I hear this phrase my BS alarm goes off.

[markses]

37. "My Bad" and "It's all Good" originate in African American

Vernacular English (AAVE). I personally see nothing wrong with either expression, the first of which successfully conveys an acknowledgment of responsibility and the second of which - in its original meaning - generally conveyed forgiveness in a "Don't worry about it" kinda way, yeah?

To put each in further context, I started hearing "my bad" fairly early on its use - I think - on basketball courts in Brooklyn (late 1980's). So, Player A would make a mistake, say, a bad pass leading to a turnover, and would take responsibility for it: "My bad." I thought at the time that it was a truncated form of "(That was) my bad (pass)" or "(That was) my bad (play)." In this context, it seems a remarkably efficient way to convey a sense of community feeling in a hectic environment. I guess I'm just used to the expression - having had it in my language environment for 15 years - so I don't see anything wrong with it at all.

"It's all good," has an interesting history as a coping device in ravaged minority communities, and I actually find it somewhat spiritual in its intent.

Now, of course both expressions have migrated out of their African American contexts and into white culture in general. Of course, white American "cool" slang is little more than pilfered forms of African American Vernacular English, so that should be no surprise. As sociolinguist Geneva Smitherman has argued, AAVE has to be transformative as a community-bonding dialect (and almost all linguists agree that AAVE is a fully fledged dialect with specific syntactical rules), since its expressions are usually co-opted and reproduced by the dominant white culture. So, for example, you will hardly find any black people using the expression "It's the bomb!" anymore, since that expression has successfully migrated into white suburban cultures (hell - now you'll hardly find any white folks using it, since it's abandonment by African Americans marks the decline of its "coolness" for white kids).

[RedEarth]

38. "Push the envelope" and "no problem"

In many cases "no problem" seems to have taken the place of "you're welcome". Recently, I paid a cashier at a resturant and after she handed me the change, I said "thank you". She responded by saying "no problem". I thought, well I hope it's "not a problem" to take my money. What happened to "you're welcome".

[omshanti]

39. "Trifecta" used incorrectly

like when Dick Vitale uses the word Trifecta to describe a three-point shot. ARGH!! I HATE it.
It makes me throw things at the TV!

[SiobhanClancy]

41. "Actually..."

I hear this all the time. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" "Actually,I would"