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Memfis

Getting annoyed by some words

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I'm down with translingual acceptance, though I do find it a bit odd/weird when a typified internet acronym or utterance gets used in a more 'official' setting. Windows 10 just used "IRL" on me in a notification.

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On Saturday, July 28, 2018 at 12:38 PM, lowpass30Hz said:

Trigger words and phrases:

 

 

Literally

The problem isn't the use of the word. It's when someone misuses it. 'Literally' was typically used to specify that you were not using any kind of analogy when you're describing something that you think people would assume otherwise.

 

Good example:

"Don't mind him. He just got through dropping a gallon of LSD."

"A gallon?"

"A literal gallon...out of a milk jug. I don't even know where he got it from."

 

Bad examples:

"I am literally dead right now." (Obviously, you can't be 'literally dead' or you wouldn't be talking right now)

 

"He is literally Hitler!" (No one can be 'literally Hitler' except Hitler, and he's long dead. Literally dead.)

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On a related theme, I've been seeing quite a few Minnesota license plates that have the letters "PWN". I presume they avoid certain sequences like WTF and racist ones, but this one must have escaped their radar.

 

On the original question, yes, certain words and phrases make me cringe to the point that I feel too embarrassed ever to utter them. I could never bring myself to ask Jimmy John's to "Jimmy it up". Almost all of the dumb terms associated with antisocial media make me want to vomit. "Go viral", "trending"... ugh there's already vomit on my keyboard. And my cat, who's sitting on my lap. Sorry, Milton.

 

In some cases I have come to terms with vomit words to the point where I use them quite often, but only ironically. Yeah, let's be proactive about this. It's a win win win loss I mean win.

 

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@Ichor The problem is that most people do not know (or rather care about) the difference between literally and figuratively.

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But should the fact that some people are too stupid to use certain words correctly mean that the rest of us have to avoid using them from then on? What if there aren't good alternative words to get these meanings across?

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I hate to break it to you jabrobis but meaning comes from usage, not the dictionary.

 

People are not "too stupid" to "know" the difference between the words literally and figuratively. If someone uses the word in a particular way, and you find it confusing or irritating, then it is more likely that you are too stupid to understand elementary everyday conversational English. Might as well not go outside, to be honest.

 

Good thing people like you have no real say on this, otherwise we'd all be speaking proto-Indo-European or whatever the linguists call it.

 

And no, people won't lose the ability to express themselves completely by "losing" the ability the use a particular word "correctly". They'll just express themselves differently. And you people will understand perfectly (unless you're stupid) and bitch just as hard.

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3 hours ago, Grazza said:

certain words and phrases make me cringe to the point that I feel too embarrassed ever to utter them. I could never bring myself to ask Jimmy John's to "Jimmy it up".

 

ahahah, that reminds me of how Cold Stone Creamery names their sizes "like it", "lovin' it", and "gotta have it" instead of small, medium, large, respectively. that alone is sufficient for me never to walk into one of their stores again (in addition to the mediocrity of the icecream itself ;D)

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10 hours ago, Ichor said:

Good example:

"Don't mind him. He just got through dropping a gallon of LSD."

"A gallon?"

"A literal gallon...out of a milk jug. I don't even know where he got it from."

"All the squares form a circle. All the squares form a circle. Kame!"
"Yes Mr. Popo?"
"I need you to tell me that I can leave the lookout tower."
"...You can leave the lookout tow--"
"Bitch don't tell me what to do! All the squares form a circle."

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6 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Why is that link there? What an odd little quirk.

Because there is an isomorphism between what I typed and an old Doomworld meme, and I thought I'd helpfully provide a link for the benefit of newer members.

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8 hours ago, Lane Powell said:

I hate to break it to you jabrobis but meaning comes from usage, not the dictionary.

 

People are not "too stupid" to "know" the difference between the words literally and figuratively. If someone uses the word in a particular way, and you find it confusing or irritating, then it is more likely that you are too stupid to understand elementary everyday conversational English. Might as well not go outside, to be honest.

 

Good thing people like you have no real say on this, otherwise we'd all be speaking proto-Indo-European or whatever the linguists call it.

 

And no, people won't lose the ability to express themselves completely by "losing" the ability the use a particular word "correctly". They'll just express themselves differently. And you people will understand perfectly (unless you're stupid) and bitch just as hard.

Colloquialisms are obviously a thing, but they are not somehow 'more correct' than the definitions as provided in the dictionary. I also notice you've framed your whole post in such an oddly negative way, what's the deal?

 

It's important to use words correctly if you want to get your message across clearly. Obviously context is a factor but acting like definitions don't matter at all is also a bit absurd. It's not hard and fast one way or the other.

 

I understand what you meant by 'jabrobis' for example, both due to context and it being a fairly common colloquialism, but in my opinion it is still a fuckin dumb word that reeks of tryhardism every time I hear it lol

 

edit: I'll provide an example. If I go into a thread about food and say "I shit bricks", but then turned around and said by shit I meant 'ate' and by bricks I meant 'candy', you'd take issue and rightfully so, as these terms have an established usage which I've completely ignored. In such a circumstance, the onus should not be on the reader to attempt to piece meaning together solely by context (which in itself can be perceived differently from person to person)

Edited by Doomkid

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Touching on a thing Grazza mentioned... certain words and phrases sound really really corny and cliché and I can't bear to utter them - but in my case they're just phrases like:

 

"Thank you"

"You're welcome"

"Happy birthday"

etc.

 

For all of these I have to substitute the original phrase for something else. Like "cheers" or "awesome" for the first, "no worries" (thanks, Australia) for the second, and shit like "hapu borfnorf" for the third.

 

Why am I allergic to pleasantries? This must be a documented phenomenon. Has to be. Please?

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I get annoyed by crutch phrases rather than words.

 

"ya know."

 

I start counting how many times people use crutch phrases in a single conversation and "ya know" seems to be the worst.

 

Over the years, I think English majors have issues with specific words.

 

My high school composition teacher would go crazy if someone said "fresh strawberries," because she hated the way it sounds.

 

Another high school English teacher with a doctorate went nuts if people said "like" and felt it was the scourge of the English language she wanted to wipe out.

 

A college level literature professor would get irate if the word "not" was used. "Well if it's not something what is it? TELL ME WHAT IT IS! God damn it makes you sound so ignorant when you say it. Never use not again! Have I made myself clear?" The girl cried and walked out. Then he complained that she was crying over words... no I think she was crying because he called her out on it and started with a stern tone while literally looking down on her as she was sitting and he was standing.

 

My lesbian friends in college (all English majors) hated the word "straight." "Do I turn here or go straight? Don't use that word! It's forward." It was some running joke to yell at anyone who said "straight." Know what spaghetti is? A straight line! Then they'd argue with laughter, it's a line of pasta!

 

I remember being on a date where a waiter was nervous and he just constantly used the word "Awesome."

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15 hours ago, geo said:

I get annoyed by crutch phrases rather than words.

Oh yes indeed. There are two that are pretty much verbal tics and get used a lot, but could be deleted in most instances without affecting the meaning:

"turned around and (said)"

"go ahead and"

 

Yes, both can have an actual meaning but usually don't. I used to think there was subtle shred of meaning in the latter that I wasn't quite grasping until I heard a guy ordering at a Subway: "I'm going to go ahead and order a meatball sausage yadda yadda..."

 

And back on the original topic: canon. To misquote Alexei Sayle, "Anyone who uses the word 'canon' outside the context of photography is a twat."

 

Jimmy: Pleasantries are kind of a waste of time, but hard to get around. I'm not sure if you'd like visiting southern Africa, where not just an exchange of greetings is standard, but also an exchange of "how are you?" before even the most basic conversation can take place. You might like Estonia, where they seem to use a single word, "palun", as a stand-in for most of the standard pleasantries. [When I visited Estonia, the other words I learned were those for two, three, twelve, glasses, wine, beer and vodka. I got by OK. Though a fair number of people got free drinks as a result.]

 

Edit: having checked it now, I realize that it was the word for "ten" in Estonian that I knew, but I thought it meant twelve. Not that it made a whole lot of difference after a while if you were ordering glasses of vodka.

 

Edited by Grazza

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I admit I have a habit of using crutch phrases such as "like" and "kind of"/"sort of" while in the moment of conversation. I blame it on believing words only have a loose attachment to the meaning I'm actually trying to convey. It's a way of dodging accountability.

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For me, those terms are filler to allow my brain a second to properly piece together what I'm trying to say.. If the cogs were spinning fast enough I think I could avoid them :p

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On 7/28/2018 at 6:25 PM, fraggle said:

if you're using "kek" as punctuation

 

Any acronym used as punctuation annoys me lol but typically "lol" is the culprit lol

 

Certain slang and buzzwords are especially painful, whether written or spoken. Of note:

 

- bae

- a'ight

- woke

- problematic

- for real for real

- toxic

- wait, what?

- slaughter maps are crap

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a'ight look, it's problematic and toxic that you're not woke yet. And wait, what? My bae can say slaughter maps are crap all she wants! For real for real.

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12 hours ago, Megalyth said:

 

Any acronym used as punctuation annoys me lol but typically "lol" is the culprit lol

 

Certain slang and buzzwords are especially painful, whether written or spoken. Of note:

 

- bae

- a'ight

- woke

- problematic

- for real for real

- toxic

- wait, what?

- slaughter maps are crap

 

i feel the same,

 

i blame the twitch, internet, meme, iphone, macdonalds culture, and its not always kids its grown men saying "gg" in real life at the fucking bank! people and especially men need to behave more maturely more grownup, if i see something out of place i ask my self would my grandfather act this way? a no nonsense hard working Londoner Charles Bronson type gentleman and the answer is always no, grow up act like a man not a silly internet kid at 20-30. kids these days are spoon fed, a real man is a rare thing in the real world, just yesterday i was on reddit on a gaming sub reading a post by a kid saying hes going to commit suicide because his xbox live account and 300 games got deleted because he obviously broke the rules 1 to many times, now my problem is these lefty students replying with such things as "dont do it", "talk to someboy with a heart" im sitting here thinking just do it you little weak minded kid, we dont need you. turns out hes 22 and crying on reddit about a lost xbox account!!?

at 22 i had to bury my father who coincidentally committed suicide, i dident have time to jump on the forums and reddit crying i had to take care of business.

sorry for the rant but the bottom line of this is that there is a new breed of folk, a new culture, its soft and full of iphone selfies.

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12 hours ago, CARRiON said:

a'ight look, it's problematic and toxic that you're not woke yet. And wait, what? My bae can say slaughter maps are crap all she wants! For real for real.

Fo'shizzle.

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Americans who pronounce "nucular" instead of nuclear or say "I could care less". When I hear that, I instantly deduct 20 IQ points.

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Toxic is the most annoying one out of all those. Thanks Riot for such a dumb word slammed left and right over gaming communities after blanket bombing off your shitty community! 

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"Privilege" is rapidly becoming one of those words that make me tune out upon hearing. My neighbourhood is 99% pasty white people and it's an impoverished shitehouse that I even as a grown-ass man am shit-scared to walk through at night, either alone or with others. Some privilege.

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9 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

"I could care less"

My dad told me a story about this one. Well sort of. He was on a business trip talking to the big cheese of some factory. The guy's second-in-command was there too, a real yes-man. Dad described some issue and a possible solution to it. The big cheese nodded thoughtfully and said "I concur." He then asked the yes-man what he thought. His response? "I concur less either."

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There are also benign words that annoy me for some reason. "Groceries" and "squat" sound kind of disgusting to me for some weird reason. The Romanian word for sausage also makes me want to puke.

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On 8/1/2018 at 5:16 PM, lowpass30Hz said:

@Jim Greezy Reading your post reminded me of another two linguistic pet peeves. 

 

Not capitalising the first letter of the word in a sentence and not capitalising I!

 

posted from my phone,

 

but that has reminded me of another hate..

grammar queens, id probably add them into that new soft culture i was ranting about.

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