RE: Chiches you want to bitch slap.
August 27, 2012 at 10:28 pm
(This post was last modified: August 27, 2012 at 10:33 pm by Cyberman.)
A few of my personal peeves (remember I have a British Civil Service background to draw upon):
* Thinking out of the box
* Blue-sky thinking
* 24/7
* Anyone talking about looking at the larger scale when they mean the bigger picture (increasing the scale actually reduces the size of the picture).
* Anyone talking about looking at the bigger picture.
* Anyone who comes up to a lift on the ground floor and says "are you going up?" (No, we're standing still - it must be you going down!)
* People who use SMS- or text-speak in emails and Facebook messages (why? What's the bloody point? It's not as if there's a limit to the number of characters you can use in an email. LOL.)
* People who look at a watch or clock and say "is that the time?" (No, it's the bloody airspeed velocity of a coconut-laden African Swallow!)
* I'll pray for you
* I've been praying for you
* God did answer the prayers but sometimes the answer's "no"
* Anyone who uses the term 'ad hominem' when they mean 'insult'
Not specifically clichés but which stick in my craw anyway:
Any sentence using words such as:
* Gotten (yes, I'm fully aware that it's a very old English spelling for the past tense of "got", it still creases me)
* Bunch (there are times when this word is a perfectly acceptable collective term for things such as flowers and grapes etc. It's when it gets thrown around as the collective term for everything else that it gets very, very irritating)
* Elevator when you mean lift
* First floor when referring to the ground floor of a building
* Tidbit instead of the genuinely correct but slightly rude titbit
* Rooster instead of cock (for similar historically prudish reasons)
* Aluminum when you mean aluminium; pavement when you mean road; sidewalk when you mean pavement; bum when you mean tramp; fanny when you mean bum; ass instead of arse; etc etc. In fact, when in Britain it can be really important not to confuse the words bum and fanny.
I know there's a whole bunch more but it's a pain in the fanny trying to think the bigger picture out of the aluminum box 24/7.
A bit geeky, this one, but in Doctor Who there's a secretive military organisation called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce - although in Nu-Who, the real UN apparently objected to the use of their inclusion so it was renamed the UNified Intelligence Taskforce). Anyway, it's so irritating every time I see it referred to as UNIT Taskforce.
* Thinking out of the box
* Blue-sky thinking
* 24/7
* Anyone talking about looking at the larger scale when they mean the bigger picture (increasing the scale actually reduces the size of the picture).
* Anyone talking about looking at the bigger picture.
* Anyone who comes up to a lift on the ground floor and says "are you going up?" (No, we're standing still - it must be you going down!)
* People who use SMS- or text-speak in emails and Facebook messages (why? What's the bloody point? It's not as if there's a limit to the number of characters you can use in an email. LOL.)
* People who look at a watch or clock and say "is that the time?" (No, it's the bloody airspeed velocity of a coconut-laden African Swallow!)
* I'll pray for you
* I've been praying for you
* God did answer the prayers but sometimes the answer's "no"
* Anyone who uses the term 'ad hominem' when they mean 'insult'
Not specifically clichés but which stick in my craw anyway:
Any sentence using words such as:
* Gotten (yes, I'm fully aware that it's a very old English spelling for the past tense of "got", it still creases me)
* Bunch (there are times when this word is a perfectly acceptable collective term for things such as flowers and grapes etc. It's when it gets thrown around as the collective term for everything else that it gets very, very irritating)
* Elevator when you mean lift
* First floor when referring to the ground floor of a building
* Tidbit instead of the genuinely correct but slightly rude titbit
* Rooster instead of cock (for similar historically prudish reasons)
* Aluminum when you mean aluminium; pavement when you mean road; sidewalk when you mean pavement; bum when you mean tramp; fanny when you mean bum; ass instead of arse; etc etc. In fact, when in Britain it can be really important not to confuse the words bum and fanny.
I know there's a whole bunch more but it's a pain in the fanny trying to think the bigger picture out of the aluminum box 24/7.
(August 27, 2012 at 5:39 pm)Tobie Wrote: Things like "PIN Number" or "ATM Machine" are bloody annoying.
A bit geeky, this one, but in Doctor Who there's a secretive military organisation called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce - although in Nu-Who, the real UN apparently objected to the use of their inclusion so it was renamed the UNified Intelligence Taskforce). Anyway, it's so irritating every time I see it referred to as UNIT Taskforce.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
