Use and abuse. Oh, and prejudice

Not The Archers
#1

This has prompted me to start a thread I have pondered for a while now.
Words that irk for good or no reason, bizarre or novel usages, tortured language, etc.
Not linking to individual posts on other boards would be civilised, but corporations etc are of course fair game.

Oh, and also delightful expressions, slang and the like that one happens upon.

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#2

Excetera.

Soo xx

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#3

Scalectrix.

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#4

{{{{{shudder}}}}}

I now have to sleep with my beely teeth on edge. Ugh.

Soo xxzz

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#5

Asterix the Punctuation Mark.

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#6

I arx you!
Hell’s teeth!
Bed.
Soo xxzz

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#7

Sink them into a deservingly sensitive part of some fool and all will be better.

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#8

Why do I hate ‘medley’ so much in a food, and particularly vegetable, context?
“…served with a medley of [seasonal] vegetables”
tends to mean some diabolical combination of the following:

  • We don’t change the menu that often
  • It’s what we have to hand
  • Hey, we can boil them all together!
  • Call it a ‘medley’, and we can apply the ‘it dunnarf sound posh’ supplement

It’s a nasty, cheap, aspirational-from-a-low-base, lazy little word. Mind you, in this context, ‘a selection of seasonal’ makes me almost as cross.

I think I have Serious Issues with language about food. Of which you are liable to hear more, much more, you fortunate people.

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#9

“Unacceptable” is one such for me. Perhaps you have to have dealt with whingy, entitled civil servants for it to resonate.

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#10

Pronounced (you might find yourself hearing Pip here: sorry about that) ‘unacceptaboo’.

KILL THEM. With fire.

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#11

Mercifully I was spared that particular pronunciation in Canada. But they did tend to splutter that things that simply had to be accepted because they had - actually - happened were … yes, I don’t need to go on. And we’re only talking about the delay of the shipping of their household goods, here. Possible shipwrecks, but nobody drownded.

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#12

Round here we call poncy language about food “a bit Marlow”. “Adjective disease” also gets mentioned.

House Baked Beef Tomatoes

Truffle and Garlic Roasted Flat Mushrooms (what effing difference does it make what shape they are?)

Tapenade (which can be very nice, but my goodness not as one of five separate things on the same plate meant to be eaten together)

And of course the style of writing a price that leaves out the final zero: “£14.5”. I may have mentioned this before.

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#13

Artisan.

Do I need to explain?

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#14

Has anyone else noticed

Excited to taste this dish

Instead of excited about tasting this dish

Pacifically for specifically

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#15

Because it is the wrong context?

Medley doesn’t hurt my sensibilities so badly when it is an arrangement of bits of music from various sources, I feel. Almost jazz, sometimes.

Also, I think it is the old word for one of those swimming races in which the entrants swim four different strokes up and down a swimming-bath. Like a one-person relay race.

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#16

Nucular (whazzat???)

Joolry (a “joule” is a unit of energy, not a pretty bauble)
ETA: often even worse: “joolery”

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#17

Quite a bit, my beaky friend. Mushrooms aside, though, the Marlovian does make one come over a bit stabby.

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#18

It does indeed make a difference. Flat mushrooms are the ones worth eating.

imo, obviously.

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#19

In that particular place, flat mushrooms might well mean that they’d cut them to be flat, if non-flat ones were cheaper that day.

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#20

I have spotted ‘excited for’ too often for comfort; ‘excited to’, not so much. But now I am forewarned.

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