Words that get on your nerves

I had a manager once who was (in)famous for using buzzwords and phrases. After one of his inspirational speeches to us I responded with something along the lines of "Shouldn't we consider picking the low hanging fruit before getting caught up in blue sky thinking? We also need to be careful not to trip over the box we're thinking outside of, when we look up to the sky". For some reason everybody, other than him, started laughing.

 

But that could be a good thing. It depends on the context. If for example on the way out of the loo at 4.57pm the door handle came off in your hand, leaving you now unable to open the door from the inside, you may have decided to phone a colleague to rescue you. But oh no, you left your phone on your desk. There is only one other option. You must put your pride to one side and shout loudly, 'help, I am trapped in the toilets, please someone push the door from the outside'. Then in that context, it would be a good thing if someone heard you, listened to what you were saying, then acted.

 

So long as they didn't dock you 3 minutes pay for being away from your desk

 

"Sick" Street for something that's exceptionally cool..........oh really?


One that really grates with me.....Scottish TV journalists that refuse to use the word "women" Instead using "womans."

ie. Scotland woman's rugby team etc.

maybe that's just me.

 

I've never heard that, but I can see why that would be infuriating.

At work I have got myself a reputation of being the grammar police. I'm not sure why because I'm hardly an authority on the English language. That sentence suggests to me that there is one woman in Scotland, and she owns a rugby team. I'm fairly confident that's not the intended meaning.

 

Hmmm... language development has always included the changing of meaning of pre-existing words, and it upsets me that your need for the comfort of existing language not changing seems a higher priority than the much greater challenges faced repeatedly by non-binary people.

 

Natural language development does not involve one group of people deciding to arbitrarily change the meaning of a word.
PS perhaps you would like to reconsider the language you have used in your post. @Stephen Southwest

 

‘They’ has always been used for the second person singular where the gender was unknown or uncertain … eg ‘If someone has picked up my book by mistake I hope they will return it.’ It is therefore not a change of use to refer to a single person as ‘they’.

Changes in the meaning of a word have always been initiated by discrete groups of people and then spread … ‘cool’ used to refer to a temperature … then, a couple of generations ago, stylish young folk began to refer to their favourite music and fashion as ‘cool’. Now we all know that ‘cool’ means stylish and fashionable. I expect that currently the stylish young folk roll their eyes at us discussing ‘cool music’ …. how old-fashioned are we? Their preferred music is now ‘sick’.

The word ‘gay’ used to mean ‘decorated gaudy or lighthearted’ … then homosexuals chose to use it as their preferred word to refer to themselves. The rest of the English-speaking world has followed their lead.

I know a house where the facade is covered with decorative embossed tiles. It was known as ‘Gay House’ for over 100 years … until the 1970s when new owners changed its name.

In the same village there’s a pretty cottage called Pansy Cottage. I remember the two chaps who bought it telling me ‘we knew it was the place for us as soon as we heard it’s name.’

 

My apologies for my assumption,

All good wishes, Stephen

 

The Beggars' opera was said to have made "Rich Gay and Gay Rich"
The first recorded use of gay was in Chaucer The Miller's Tale (1386) used to describe an immoral woman. The first recorded use of gay in a homosexual sense was a s recent as 1925, before that "molly" was often used.
Singular they also dates back at least to Chaucer

 

Interesting that you mention the 't' dropping, @shiney , because although, yes, it's irritating to some people, the increasing use of the - in my view - OVER pronunciation of the double 'tt's in ' baTTle' 'liTTle' etc. does my head in! Sounds horrible juvenile when rufty-tufty TV sports commentators and the like repeatedly say it. Well, when anybody says it, to be honest. I keep a basket of socks by my armchair to chuck at the telly and collect them up at the end of the day

 

I'm told, by younger colleagues, that these are no longer "sick", "trendy" or "cool" and socks should be ankle length.

 

Does he often go 'on a journey' as well @KT53.
Most of you probably thought - not a long enough one....