Chiches you want to bitch slap.

[Cyberman]

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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.

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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.

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I find Stimbo very funny but I agree with him. Americans have a funny way of saying things and they can be confusing. I have been to America and I was on a train with my Mum when an announcement went "This train will depart momentarily". My Mum and I looked at each other in bewilderment. I thought there was a technical fault and the train would depart and return to where we were seconds later. I made a mental note of the word and when I got home, I looked it up in my trusty Oxford and it says "momentarily" also means "in a moment" in US English.

As for the cock/rooster thing, it's got a lot to do with Americans being prudish. I read an article in the Guardian once about how you can't say "toilet" in the US. You've got to say "bathroom". Naturally, they cooked up the word "rooster" so they didn't have to use the word "cock". I wonder if the puritans who founded the US had anything to do with this.

In the US, they say "elevator" all the time. And of course their elevators take you to the wrong floor - you have to reduce the floor by one all the time. I've been to Lisbon and they call their lifts "Elevador" (I could have spelt it wrong). Lisbon has very interesting lifts that take you from one road level to another. My dad says it's because Lisbon is built on a hilly land. Oh, and "spelt" is a problem too. I was told in another forum that I spelt "spelt" wrong. I didn't check with them how they would spell it. Perhaps "spelled" which looks weird to me.

Why are they so different? Isn't English the language of England?

America and Britain: two countries seperated by a common language.

Yes, "momentarily" really makes me cringe. "I'll be with you momentarily" (oh, aren't you staying? I have had a bath you know!)

Also I too have problems with words like "spelt". I'm ashamed to say that over here the spelling is becoming dominant, even though English english really makes no distinction between that and "spelled", which looks more correct to my eyes; "spelt" looks ugly and just wrong. Apparently it can cause confusion in America, too, since spelt is a laurel and hardy type of wheat grown mostly in Europe.

"Smelt" is the same; it's used as the past participle of "smell" but the word can also be a type of freshwater fish, not to mention something you do to extract metal from ore.

In fact, on the topic of smells, it annoys me on those extremely, vanishingly rare occasions that a person might say "you smell" (my response would be "no, you smell; I stink" - I promise you this situation is almost non-existent, applying only to cases in which I may have trodden in something unsavoury. I do wash and bathe, honestly! Am I protesting too much?)

Some more that occurred to me just this morning:

* "please fill out this form" (sorry, but you cannot "fill out" any kind of paperwork. You can fill in a form, or you can make out a form, but the only things you can "fill out" include things like clothing - as in "she really fills out a bra, doesn't she?")

* any talk of a person being executed. You cannot execute a person. Somebody signs a death warrant, then it's that order which is executed, i.e. carried out.

* a person being "hung" instead of "hanged" (giving rise to the old joke that a criminal ought to be well-hung: "indeed I am, madam!" or "that's what she said!")

* people who talk about energy as though it's a catch-all term for every kind of magic and spiritual mumbo-jumbo

* the word "irregardless" makes me want to punch that person even if it means doing it through the internet

* starting a handwritten letter with "I'm writing to tell you..." (Of course you're writing, it's a bloody letter!)

* the phenomenon of a happy, fun thread turning into a blazing row after about two pages

Also this is rather esoteric and requires a bit of backstory. Back in the nineties, I had a period of unemployment, one 'solution' for which was to attend what was called a "Job-club", a privately-sponsored Government scheme to reclassify a percentage of the unemployed as "job seekers" and thus downwardly massage the official unemployment figures. Basically it involved daily attending a group and being 'taught' how to read the job pages of newspapers, fill out () application forms, watch 'inspirational' videos etc. Anyway, their motto, which was drummed into our heads like a mantra was:

* "Getting a job is a job in itself!"

Yes, we used to throw up in our mouths too.

I'm sure there were some more but my memory seems to be leaking.

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Oh by the way:

I find Stimbo very funny but I agree with him.

This actually made my day. I do aim to please and it's encouraging when those efforts are appreciated, or even simply acknowledged. Thank you!