The Guardian reported on words most hated by a selection of English poets. These included redacted, pulchritude, and appall.
My wife’s least favorite word is moist. It literally grosses her out to say the word in her presence.
Words that make me wince include:
Got: I just can’t find a way of using this word without sounding guttural and stupid. The words have or received are almost always suitable replacements.
Shortened words: It annoys me to hear someone use the word delish in place of delicious. Finish the word! It’s only one more syllable! I also despise the avoidance of profanity through abbreviation (a-hole being the word that makes me cringe the most, but there are many, many others). Either swear or don’t. Abbreviating it only causes the reader or listener to mentally reference the actual word, thereby defeating the purpose of avoiding the word in the first place.
Homophobia: Webster’s defines this word as “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.” Not good. If you discriminate against someone based upon their race, you are a racist. If you discriminate based upon sex, you are a sexist. Neither makes any mention of fear or aversion. But if you discriminate against a homosexual, you suffer from homophobia and are a homophobe. You could possess an irrational fear or you could be acting discriminatory towards homosexuals, but there is no word to distinguish between the two. Thus the word homophobia does double duty, and in doing so, I believe it diminishes the prejudicial and discriminatory parts of its definition.
Do you have any wince-worthy words that you’d like to share?
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Not quite the same thing, but the non-word, “libary.” I once worked for an intelligent, well-educated, professional man who said “libary,” and it drove me up the wall.
Why would berries lie?
For the longest time, I thought the phrase “For all intents and purposes” was “for all intensive purposes.”
So I rarely used it.
After all, how often are purposes serious enough to be characterized as intensive?
I also cannot stand how everyone, including the media, misuses the phrase “begs the question.” It is meant to imply a form of circular logic (I like dogs because dogs are likable), but it is almost exclusively used to express a state in which one cannot help but question something that has become obvious and ubiquitous.
Perhaps I should write a post on annoyingly mispronounced and misused words and phrases as well.
Maybe it’s my Germanic descent, but I find nothing wrong with the guttural “Got”. How’s this:
It was just plain too much; I went to the shed and got the axe.
Well, that sentence is pretty guttural in its nature, too. Wouldn’t you say?
Though I admit that I would be inclined to use the word grab in place of got.
I had thought of grabbed as an alternative to got, too. I do like the sound of got over grabbed, though. It’s more immediate and conveys an irrational impulse better. But, here is a sentence that I don’t think that there is an alternative word:
They went out and got drunk.
I still don’t like the word, but you might have me there.
I don’t like the word obese, for a number of reasons. It sounds like a combination of obscene + beast, which would be excellent if it were a more literary word (describing something mythological and monstrous) rather than a clinical term. And the long ‘e’ sound followed by the hiss of the ‘s’ makes me picture something long & slithery rather than the condition that it describes. It’s a word that ought to be onomatopoeic, but isn’t.
Oh, please do write a post on annoyingly mispronounced and misused words and phrases as well! I hope I don’t offend anyone present, but the mispronunciation that drives me the most crazy (even more so than “libary”) is “acrost” for “across”.
Also… phrases that drive me bananas: “My bad” (Bad is an adjective, not a noun! Also, when one says this one sounds like a 2-year-old.) and “What time do you want up?” instead of “What time do you want to get up?” (Although that may be a family peculiarity and not widely used by the general public.)
Yes, “What time do you want up?” is all you.
I cringe when I hear or see the word retarded. I do not want to go into a long rant, but I usually want to slap someone when they call a person “retarded.”
Your wife is spot on; “moist” is a disgusting word and to be avoided at all costs!
What makes me cringe is when Brits use the word “awesome”. It sounds so unbelievably daft with a British accent – usually it’s people who are trying hard to be cool and trendy (having picked up “awesome” from American movies and TV shows) but are definitely not.