Language Peeves
 

Are there things some people say - misued words, stupid things, overused cliches, that drive you nuts?

Here are some of mine:

Using the word "literally" with a metaphore
Um, unless you're using the technology from the movie "Scanners" - no, they won't.

Misusing "exponentially"

This word means "the constant e raised to the power equal to a given expression, as e3x, which is the exponential of 3x." For example, if your income was $1000 last January and you increased your income exponentially each month by the power of two, here's what you would have made in later months:

Jan $1000
Feb $2000
Mar $4000
Apr $8000
May $16,000
June $32,000
July $64,000
Aug $128,000
Sep $254,000
Oct $508,000
Nov $1,016,000
Dec $2,032,000

Keep it up and by next summer you'll be richer than Bill Gates.

So if this were true:
The oceans would be literally boiling by now!

DejaVu all over again: Redundant.

What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas: Fun advertising slogan, but wayyyy over used at this point.


For computer database nerds: Null Value"Null" means NO Value, so a null value is like a full emply space, or a dry wetness.

Any others?

yeah, I have a couple:
People who misuse the word exponentially:
It doesn't have to be e. It can be 10^(0.00000001*t).

Nucular

Gender instead of Sex. We have a sex, words have a gender.

Caucasian. It doesn't mean what we use it for.

Next friday to mean the friday following the next one. We say next week to mean the week immediately following, but next friday always seems to mean the friday after the friday that is immediately following.

"Turn right here!" when a left turn is indicated.

It's a MOOT point - not a MUTE point...

I wish Muteness on the next person who says it...

I'll quote a mute point for you...

I hate when people say ATM machine (duh doesnt the M in ATM stand for machine) and PIN number.....same reason

The use of cliches seems to be literally increasing exponentially. Staying silent on this matter is a mute point.

hot water heater (water heater)
irregardless (regardless)
stupidest (Accepted in conversation, but was considered poor English as far back as the 80's. I was told to use most stupid, more stupid, dumbest... not sure if that's really correct.)
"to tell the truth"
"bottom line"
"let's get this puppy done"
"to be honest"
"big time"
"what ever"
references to someone being a "dog"
overuse of "extreme", "radical", "alternative"
I'm sure there's many more.

"I hate people who..."

"I hate..."

"I hate..."

"I hate..."

my peeve is EBONICS and the rest of that hip hop slang.

MY PEEPS

MUH DAWGS, SUP BITCHES!

GUNNA GET MY CRUNK ON!

spelling or pronouncing "that" as "dat" and "this" as "dis"


you sound like an illiterate dog and just enforce the racial stereotype that you're a fucking moron in baggy pants. black people I like, cuba gooding, black people I dont like, pretty much every rapper.

not because of thier race, but because of the culture that they adopt taking liberties with the English language to the point of rape. (and then we can digress into British English vs American English in another topic...)

"Very truly I tell you..."

Jesus said that like... A ZILLION TIMES... in Ye Olde Goode Book.

Couldn't he have changed it up to, "Check this out, bro" or "Fo'shizzle" ?

...

(drum crash)

Crompsin, I'd read that Bible. Fo. Shizzle.

It bugs me when people here (in the South, y'all!) say "carry". As in "Leslie's stopping by and she's gonna carry me to lunch." Leslie weighs 100 pounds soaking wet. She's not carrying you anywhere.

any expression that would allow me to win at bullshit bingo I emailed the rules in today's marathon meeting - some people didn't find the humor in it... :D

How come "think outside the box" isn't on that?? Too easy?

Growing up, my folks always said "Close the light." I never knew this was not acceptable until I moved 30 miles north...and just two weeks ago, I heard someone else say it!!!! Sounded weird...

"Oh snap."

"Shank" in place of other words, e.g. "Shank you very much."

Ya'll instead of y'all. It's a contraction.

The phrase "on tomorrow". WTF is that? You can't call someone "on tomorrow," ya dumbshite, you call them TOMORROW.

Overuse of "specifically" (or misuse of "pacifically"), "seriously" "like" and "um." Like our medical director who said "um" or "uh" a whopping grand total of 48 times in a two-minute voicemail. The record is 87 in the same length of time by our Chaplain. "I'm seriously, like, um, going to kick some ass in the meeting tomorrow if they don't talk right, specifically regarding the nurses. Seriously."

The one that really gets me for some stupid reason is a friend that constantly used "whenever" instead of "when". For example, she'd tell a story and it was "whenever I was going to the grocery store the other day..." No. It should be "When I was going to the..." She drives me crazy. The dang oompaloompa.

My grandparents and that side of the family used to say "Good Niiiight!" when something surprised them or was unexpected. Instead of taking the lord's name in vain. It took me forever to figure that out as a kid, I always thought the were celebrating. :lol:

That was an Archie Bunkerism - He always said Good Night Nurse... or something along that lines -it was his way of cussing in prime time :D

Actually is one that I'm guilty of often, and I try to stop myself from saying it because I know how annoying it is when people start every sentence with Actually...

George Carlin would be proud

I'm going to rewrite the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible using words pulled from this thread.

/math
That's true it doesn't but any exponential(or number for that matter) can be represented in terms of e. Your example is e^(0.00000001*t*ln(10)). However, the initial point is somewhat incorrect, an exponential can be slow, take for example an exponential divided by a factorial. So it's technically not true that it has to be a big increase, i.e. it is possible that the the change in temperature of the polar ice caps can be approximated by an exponential. For small values of x, and a correctly chosen constant k, (e^x)/k! and the change around those values can be quite small. In fact (e^x)/(x!) is bounded and approaches 0 as x goes to infinity.
/end math

^^^ Thanks for the math explanation of exponentials...I was debating whether or not it was worth my time.

Ebonics is a good peeve...Its disgusting to me that there are people here at the university who are so obsessed with rapper culture that they wont use english.

when people use "stress" and "strain" interchangeably

"AR-15 assault rifle"

when people use "re-iterate" when they haven't iterated it in the first damned place.

I don't have very many normal language peeves just online ones.

One big one is wut.
I just don't understand it. It's only shortening the word by one letter, messing up another letter, and just makes you feel dumber by reading it.

I can't stand it when people say "supposably" instead of "supposedly". My husband and boss both do it, so I hear it on a regular basis.

It used to drive me crazy when I worked at a grocery store and people would use "sale" instead of "sell", and vice versa. For example, the meat department was always overstocking stuff and would put up a sign that said "Priced to sale!". I don't know how many times I fixed the sign...and it would be incorrect again next week.

This drives me nuts. Also, simular instead of similar. Misused tenses also drive me crazy, but I'm not as picky as some when it comes to split infinitives.

Same here, but it's because I'm a star trek fan. It's my duty to boldly split infinitives wherever I can.

'Anyways' isn't a word. It's 'anyway'.

Drives me nuts.

I do believe you mean 'verily'. Just so you know. Not that it's important or anything...

there is no "f" in the word "bathroom"

you ask a question, not axe

you drink iced tea, not ice tea

they are asians not orientals

you orient yourself, not orientate

What the hell is a "split infinitive??" I asst taught english for 3 years, got A's at least in it and never heard of it.

A split infinitive is when you use an infinitive such as "to go" and put an adverb between to and go. The most notable is, of course, "to boldly go". Rules regarding the use of split infinitives have become quite relaxed.

My peeve is the misuse of the phrase "i could care less" instead of I couldn't care less. People just don't understand the difference

In Jena, LA, Al Sharpton said in his speach "Two wrongs don't make a civil right." I have no idea WTF that's supposed to mean.

Not to rag on African American speech, but why is it that an idea seems more credible if you can express it in a rhyme?

One of my language peeves is the phrase "stop back."

I've also heard one person use the term to ride 'on the car' instead of 'in the car'. Where oh where did that come from?

I have a couple. I work with a guy for whom English is a second language. His one funny is saying "Today morning", rather than 'this morning'. It is probably not incorrect - it just sounds funny to me.

The other is the use of "off of" - this seems an American usage (e.g. "he jumped off of the box"). I really can't see what the "of" is in there for ("he jumped off the box"). Just seems like a wasted word to me...

edit: off topic - I just saw how similar Grancey's cat and my cat look. :)

Oh, you're a sexy beast.

pronouncing "ask" as "arks". The bloody "s" is before the "k" people, not after.

It drives me crazy that I say "ast" intead of "asked"... it's a holdover from where I grew up, I suppose.

"Rediculous" instead of "ridiculous"... ACK! Why do people *do* that??
Any bastardized form of internet chat... "u", "yu", "r", etc. We are not texting, there is no reason to be this lazy.

Are you still annoying if you use some of these phrases etc. in jest? :D

I think jest is ok.

IM IN UR TFP, REEDIN UR POSTZ

LIEK SO.


or, like so. :)

AOLspeak drives me nuts, especially here.

Otherwise, I hereby crown Grancey the Queen Grammar Nazi of the Day. It shall be a good day.

I go with I just don't give a rats ass - is that OK? I know i said it a few times yesterday and it made more than a few people roll their eyes :D

On that same line... when I hear females say they are ON their period :) you have it... or you're praying... not sure how you can be on it... :D On the rag yes.. but on a period... not so much :D

Isn't that quote a null value?

By the way, "null value" is exactly what the phrase intends: the value of something in a certain set is "null" or "0."

100% agreed. I could care a lot less than I do regarding this one. :)

Well, it says "Very truly I tell you" in mine. Damn Lutheran-issue golden tomes.

Alas, we're only debating word choices used in the most duplicated and popular book ever written.

NOTHING IN THE BIBLE IS EVER WRONG! (drum crash)

...

How's this for a language peeve:

Crompsin's kid: "Dad, can I get a dollar or two?"

Crompsin: "Yes, I noticed you still have opposable thumbs."

The whole "can I get a" reminds me of shouting Baptists.