Irritating Words
I recently saw a post on Facebook about being irritated by the word "like." I'm jumping on the bandwagon and stating that I too loathe "like." It’s not the only word or phrase I find irritating. Some of my most disliked phrases are:
skill set
sample size
price point
use case, as in “I bought it specifically to use with my passport Travelers Notebook. For that use case . . . “
Unless these phrases are being used in a specialized field (e.g., "sample size" in statistics), one word can and should be used instead of two.
skills
sample
price
use
Why use two words when one will suffice? All these phrases were originally defined in specialized fields. They snuck into everyday use by people being pretentious. A person sounds more knowledgeable and smart to use "skill set" instead of "skill.
There is another category of irritating words should be avoided in speech and writing. These are lazy words. "Lazy words (whether it is a verb, adjective or adverb) are words that don’t clearly describe an action and a person, place, or thing. *
just
really
perfect
awesome
f#+k
so
that
very
These words are used by lazy talkers. Why improve your vocabulary if you can always use "perfect" or “awesome? (The next time a waiter tells me that my order is perfect, I may become violent as Jack Nicholson did in the movie Five Easy Pieces.)
This sort of language waters down a word's meaning. If I see a sunset, I can no longer use the word “awesome.” If everything is awesome, then nothing is awesome. If everything is perfect, then nothing is perfect.
I’m sorry; I keep thinking of other examples of irritating language. One is the use of acronyms and abbreviations that originated in the texting world and have snuck into longer, more formal media. It took me years to find out what LOL means.
Do you ever read comments online? Most commenters seem to have forgotten such mundane things as capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
How about ending a sentence with a hanging word, for example, “so”?
Where is my awesome thesaurus? Well, I'm like, just too really exhausted to search for a better word; so . . . . . .