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What is a non-problematic word that you avoid using?
We all have words we dislike for one reason or another. I am specifically talking about words that are non-problematic, so slurs and politically incorrect words are out of the scope of this post. I am talking about words that you find inane, dense, overly broad, vague, imprecise, pedantic, confusing, or inadequate for any reason. Maybe you just don't like how they sound.
As long as it is not a slur or politcally incorrect, for the purposes of this post, anything goes! Any language too!
I work as a nurse.
I do not like the term client.
In school, they teach you to use “client” instead of “patient.” Some hospitals prefer this as well.
I don’t like it because I believe it gives the wrong connotation and blurs my role in providing care to the person.
Client implies that I am here to serve a paying customer, and that I should be subjected to their demands based on their wishes. For example, people demand more pain medication sometimes while they are nodding off and have an oxygen level that is so low it could cause actual harm to give them more.
My role is to treat conditions based on multiple factors using both objective and subjective data, and I make those treatment decisions based on best practice that my education provided me. This means that the person’s role in our interaction ends up being more passive, whereas client would imply a more active role in the care.
I agree with "patient" being best in medical settings. I use "client" for my case management/mental health folks as "patient" is too medicalized for that work (and since I work exclusively with students currently, I mostly use "students")
But I would hate being considered a client at the hospital
Is there a non medicalized alternative word for mental health that isn't client? Is it just English that's like this? I'd be curious to know how other languages handle service recipients.
For example food banks visitors I prefer 用客 (use guest) rather than 客戶 (client) or even 用戶(user).
For senior homes I prefer 院友 (friend of the institution/organization) or the even milder 園友 (friend of the gardens) which is pronounced the same but carries such different connotations.
For mental health and social workers, apparently there's been a shift from 案主 to 服務對象. The English for 案主 usually translates to Client, but the literal Chinese is more like "case protagonist" -- the shift is to move away from event focus to person focus. Hence 服務對象, or literally "service match", the latter part as in, the way we would say a love match making match or the man of your dreams kind of match. Sometimes the forms apparently translate as constituent or service recipient, both of which sound more cold, but still preferable to client.
Edit: this Chinese speaking clinical psychologist prefers 來訪者, or visitor: we're just two travellers on our own paths towards wellness, and currently you're coming little closer to me for chats for a time. I like that a lot. Why can't we use visitors for many of these relationships?
Participant maybe? But I've never seen it used for like individual therapy, it feels more appropriate for a program but it could be used. "User" I suppose goes along with "provider" but "user" can have the connotation of substance abuse. Some agencies might insist on "individual" or "person" (which is sometimes tied to demonstrating "person centered therapy" which isn't what that means)
Client has always seemed fine to me for this context. I'm providing them a service. MH providers are "hired" by their clients in (most) individual therapy settings, and can be "fired" by them. I think client works with that for me. My notes use the student's first name anyway but many therapists will abbreviate Client to Ct and Patient or Participant to Pt for brevity anyway.
Visitor (or guest) feels really euphemistic to me? We're not visiting, we're working. When I see my therapist I don't want to pay her to be visiting, I want her to be helping me work through my shit. I'm not at a national park walking around, I'm being actively assisted.
ETA: neither constituent or service recipient feels better than client in English to me. It helps that I'm not associated with corporate culture at all - so I don't have the sales association with the word.
I'm not really a fan of euphemism but also don't actively call a client "client" to their face or anything.
Unfortunately (imo) the word that caught on in psychiatric rehabilitation during the recovery movement was "consumer." I work in a medical setting, so it's "patient" for me.
Yeah I haven't been in corporate spaces and it was not the preference during my education so I'm not surprised, and also ick.
The Montessorians use "friend" as a catch-all term of address, and I find it quite nice, but I can see that blurring some important boundaries in a social work context.
Quakers do too, but while I'd absolutely use that with younger kiddos (ala a large number of Tiktok teachers whose Montessori "status" I don't know about), I don't think it'd land with my college students.
And yeah, we're not friends and that's an important boundary for me
Listen here, friend, I ain't yer friend.
:)
I'm not your friend, buddy!
This form of address always brings canadians to mind, but I quite like it and as the years go by find myself using it more and more.
My kid’s daycare is not a Montessori based one but the teachers there refer to the students as “friends” as well. I never cared for it personally. I don’t think there’s anything negative about calling them students, pupils, children, kids, charges, etc. Friend has its own meaning and sometimes the kids really aren’t friends with each other.
I do wonder why “pupil” fell out of use though in favor of “student.” I think pupil must have had some sort of negative connotation attached to it that we’ve forgotten about it. Or maybe people just thought it sounded “stuffy?”
A central tenet of the Montessori method is the importance of peace, so I think they do mean for the to be friends to an extent. But I take your point. My daughter has said, "We're all friends, but some people are better friends than others."
Maybe someone asked the principal if it meant "student", and they said, "No, eye, dear." So since no one was sure what it meant, they just say "student" now.
Yeah my son has said similar where he has his best friend and then his 2nd best friends and then his friends. I tried to tell him he doesn’t need to rank order his relationships but it did not compute, I guess it’s something pretty hard wired for us humans.
Reminds me very slightly of Animal Farm :)
Incredible, a damn near perfect set up and the flawless tee in.
You have the support of at least one internet stranger!
[Edit:] Adding: I just hate capitalism and consumerism and everything that tries to remove all other possible ways to be and relate to each other.
Oof yeah, I don't mind "client" in other more business-y contexts but being called a client at a hospital skeeves me out.
I'm sure the stakeholders at Private Equity who buy out the hospital systems would prefer the term 'AIS' or Ambulatory Income Sources, but their PR department got them to use alternate verbiage.
Yes, I absolutely hate "client", speaking as a volunteer. I'm not here to take your money and I'm not here because this is a financial transaction in any way: this is a service, sure, but not transactional. It's from one community member to another, from one human to another. And I don't understand why agencies keep pushing Client on everyone.
This goes the other way too. When I go to a store, I'm a customer. I'm not a guest visiting my friends.
That seems very bad for PR as it makes the hospital seem like a soulless corporation and you're nothing more than a walking moneybag. Leave "client" to the Lawyers, Accountants and business to business relations.
Client exists in social services too, so it really depends on the paradigm. I do hate it as a "patient" replacement though
biweekly. As Merriam-Webster explains, the word initially meant once per two weeks, but it is also frequently used to mean twice per week, so the meaning of the word is now totally ambiguous. Merriam Webster suggests that when using the word biweekly you should also specify which meaning is intended, e.g.: "We should meet biweekly, starting this Monday and meeting again in two weeks."
But a word that needs to be defined every time it's used is not a useful word!
inflammable. Does this mean unable to catch on fire or capable of catching on fire? Spoiler: inflammable means flammable. There are few pairs of English words that have exactly identical meanings and connotations. Inflammable belongs to one of those pairs. Just use flammable instead.
Innovate, incline, inkling, innocent.
Seems the "in" prefix can exist without needing to have meaning. But it's still confusing when the word "flame" is attached because it seems obvious that it's meant to imply heat, fire, flaring, etc.
Innovate and incline: in- means into or toward. Toward something new and toward a slope respectively.
Inking is not using a prefix.
Innocent is but this in- means not. The word comes from in plus nocere: not + to harm
I'm not being insincere when I insist that I'm indebted to you for this information.
The English language is fascinating and also a total mess. I love how ridiculous it is.
There's a saying that gets quoted a lot when talking about English. It's become a bit of a cliche, but I still love it because it's absolutely true...
Yes and that's the reason I'd argue "flammable" has no business being there.
You don't feel clined to novate without having a kling what it's about.
If only the spelling was enflammable, then we wouldn’t have to wonder about which in- it is.
Also it would seem to ensure we have fewer problems communicating when we try to insure things.
I try to exercise at least biweekly, but sometimes I get lazy and it's more like biweekly.
Honestly the only reason I know this: https://youtu.be/Q8mD2hsxrhQ
Do you say every two weeks and twice a week, or use replacements like fortnightly and semiweekly?
I'd only ever say fortnightly if I were feeling particularly cheeky.
Fortnightly is genuinely the best way I know of to express this idea, so that's what I tend to use. Reactions seem split down the middle between people who think I'm a freak and mild word dorks. Seems to be a good tell of whether I'll get along with somebody.
Fortnight is pretty commonly used in Australia, so for that reason I never understood the ambiguity with “biweekly” because from context, “well they didn’t say `fortnightly’, they went out of their way to use this unusual word instead, so they must mean twice per week”
I find it wild that someone would have a negative reaction to the word fortnight. I've used it all my life in multiple countries and never had some even comment on it.
I think in the US there's a fairly large swath of people who wouldn't understand the meaning of the word "fortnight", and even among those that do, it comes across as very antiquated, so it has the potential to come off like you're flexing your education/vocabulary on them. I never encountered the word outside of historical fiction until I started regularly interacting with people from outside the US.
Yeah, I hear you. I've had someone from the USA go off at me for being posh cos I used the word corridor. They'd never heard of it before.
But they called you posh?
I'll be in trouble if I ever move back to the US from Australia. Words like "fortnight" and "reckon" are just an unthinking part of my vocabulary now.
At least they are counteracted by all the cutesy words I've picked up as well, like "brekkie" (breakfast) and "sparky" (electrician).
Yeah I suspect the cute nicknames for things will counteract any issues (and for those with Australian accents, I suspect that'd cover for any weird vocab differences). Besides, "reckon" has the opposite connotation in the US ime, so they might counteract each other!
Oh, interesting. Could you elaborate on your experience with US versus Australian use of reckon?
I don't have much familiarity with Australian usage specifically, but I've encountered "reckon" as used by British English speakers, so hopefully I'm not off-base in assuming they're the same. To my knowledge, there isn't a difference in grammar or meaning between American and British usages of "reckon" -- it's purely the social flavor.
At least in my experience, Americans associate "reckon" with the South and thus with unfortunate stereotypes of uneducated rednecks. Growing up in the US, I encountered it almost exclusively from the mouths of fictional characters of this stereotype. Etymology Online says that it was "regarded by Anglophiles as provincial or vulgar" once it became associated with the US South, and while I'm not sure about the "Anglophiles" portion, "provincial" is exactly the right word for the connotation "reckon" had for me when I grew up. The type of accent that a farmer character has in a children's cartoon is the epitome of the stereotype I associate with use of "reckon" as an American. I think it's reasonably at home in a lighter Southern accent as well, though -- I haven't played the games in ages so I don't remember if he does, but I can easily imagine Joel from The Last of Us using "reckon" and it coming off perfectly natural (and not necessarily making him seem any more uneducated than his accent would more generally -- there's a lot of dark sociolinguistic stigma when it comes to Southern accents in the US, even when they're not particularly "thick"). I cannot, by contrast, really picture Ellie using it. Even if that's not accurate to the games (I am not hunting through cutscene footage to check lol), I think it reflects the association that I (and many other Americans) have between this particular word and Southern accents well.
Once I started interacting with English people more often, I encountered them casually using "reckon" and was bemused by the contrast between the stereotype I grew up with and the people I heard using it this way in the UK. The mismatch in their accents meant there was never any risk of my transferring the stereotype to them based on their usage of the word, though. It's the association with Southern people that actually carries the stereotype, and that doesn't work with a British accent. Heck, it probably doesn't even work in my very Northern accent, though it never really entered my vocabulary so it hasn't come up.
First of all - thank for elaborating. I understand what you mean now. The meanings are similar but the social connotations are different. Growing up in the US, I would generally agree with your assessment. Although just yesterday while watching The Last of Us, I realized how cool Pedro Pascal made "reckon" sound.
Anyhow, I wanted to separately express my appreciation for your various posts on linguistics and etymology. I'm a huge fan of both and I keep coming across posts from you across tildes that always teach me really interesting things about words.
Aw, thanks! 😊 I'm really passionate about linguistics so I'm really glad others appreciate my trivia.
Most of my etymology knowledge just comes from knowing the good online etymology dictionaries to hunt through. Knowing where to look is more powerful than my individual knowledge ever could be! Etymonline is basically peerless for this in English -- I highly recommend using this if you ever come across a word day-to-day and wonder about its etymology! Its sources are solid and its interface is pretty great.
Noted and bookmarked - thanks!
Yeah, I hear you. I've had someone from the USA go off at me for being posh cos I used the word corridor. They'd never heard of it before.
I can proudly say I've started using fortnightly since Taylor Swift made a song titled Fortnight, but that's just me...
I was just wondering if her using it in the song I would increase people's comprehension of this word.
I assume the popularity of the game Fortnite only confuses the matter further. Most people of a certain age will know only the game.
You've been missing out on Demetri Martin and Will Forte
I brought back fortnightly to colonial Williamsburg as the schedule went out every two weeks. I started using the term because it applied and others picked up on it. I guess that might be my legacy. Lol
Interesting, I have always interpreted 'biweekly' to mean 'twice in a week' and to use 'fortnightly' to say 'once every two weeks.' Similarly, I always take 'biannual' to mean 'twice within a year.'
I had a couple biweekly meetings at work which I scheduled and helpfully titled:
Idk if any of my coworkers found the names funny, but they always gave me a chuckle.
The bi- prefix is widely attested with both meanings (twice an X and every two X), and it's apparently used for both about equally. So the confusion is definitely there regardless I'm afraid. Fortnight is more or less completely antiquated in American English afaik, but it's possible in areas where it's still in use that it helps cancel out some of the potential confusion? But then again, semi-weekly has also existed as an alternative and hasn't prevented the confusion there either.
Any time I set up something to happen every other week I refer to it as “fortnightly.” Partly for precision, but mostly because I think it adds some whimsy to the calendar.
Consumer. Sounds gross, like I'm an animal eating slop. I'll use the word customer or client if possible to replace in context. Customer or client implies the business has obligations to you, in my mind.
Any variation of consuming art makes me die inside a little.
I've always been surprised at how comfortable people are referring to what their news or social media apps display as "feeds". It just makes me think of a horse's feedbag, and the analogy of base food requirements being strapped to your face feels disconcertingly apt.
That's interesting to me. I don't associate it that way at all. I'm used to feeding data into a machine or software.
Yeah, I think the modern use of "feed" on social media comes from its use in technology/industry. But then its use in technology and industry comes from its earlier meaning of "food for animals" so 🤷
I've never made this association either, but now it makes sense to me. You're feeding data to a machine or software because you want something from it, like you're feeding a pig because you want its meat. Similarly, users are fed whatever crap makes them come back because websites want their data.
It's definitely used for any number of things - like I would feed branches into a woodchipper, or feed receipt tape into a receipt printer. Definitely not limited in meaning, it definitely just means loading things into a thing (or things). :)
But woodchippers and printers eat branches and paper like an animals eats food. It's the same principle.
Related to "feeds": Some people are seem very annoyed by the word "podcast". Maybe because it is associated with "iPod" which is Apple-centric. Some tried for a while to call it "webcast" but that doesn't stick. I listen to one podcast where they call it "pod" and that seems worse.
I’ve heard a few people and podcasters use “pod” ironically, never sincerely, so my mental model has it very closely associated with “try-hard wannabe” who are trying to make something cool when really they’re not
I think feed is perfectly appropriate because the interaction pattern is very much like an animal at a trough. Every time you refresh Reddit you need to think of yourself as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors demanding to the Internet “FEED ME!”
On a similar note, I find the expression "consume/consuming content" (and "content creator" too while we're at it) incredibly dystopian-sounding in a way I'm not sure I can properly articulate. The mental image of someone "consuming content", to me, is closer to someone stuck on their phone being spoonfed Tiktok brainrot by the algorithm than someone actively enjoying a movie/TV show/video/song/whatever. It's like someone just shoveling more and more crap in their mouth just to say they're doing it. It makes everything feel very passive and transactional.
In the phrase "consuming content" the word I more take issue with is "content". The way it's come to be used in the last several years I associate strongly with vapid, lowest common denominator online slop that values quantity and platform/advertiser optimization over quality. "Media" by contrast I'd associate with the same general video/audio/text groups but without necessarily the association to social media (ironically enough). The term "consuming" honestly I like, but I associate it much more with active learning (like consuming books or art is choosing to take in the information, lessons, and beauty therein and make them a part of you) rather than being passively force fed
That's a good distinction to make, especially in regards to "consuming" in that context. I like your perspective on it. I guess I should have clarified I'm not an anglophone, so my perspective is from my interpretation/translation of the words.
Just the word "content" in general makes my skin crawl. It feels so transactional and just...low grade? Throw away? I'm not sure, I just hate the word. Everything is "content" and it just makes it all sound so disposable.
Transactional is a good way to describe it, honestly. It makes the whole interaction feel dishonest.
Content creator has a very generic feel to it. "We make stuff" - uhh, thanks?
A few decades ago when we had a parent volunteer day at one of the schools in my district, I got to talking with one and asked what he did. He told me he was a vice president, with the implication that you could just plop him into any industry and he could do the VP job. Which kinda mystified me as a person in IT, with its very specific knowledge that cannot be transferred to other types of work e.g. hotel management or making candy.
I dislike the term "influencer" for its similarly generic feel. It seems impossible that it could be a real job, even though I have a niece who is doing just that.
Influencer irks me for a similar reason - too vague/generic, but also doesn't sound real. What does it even mean that your job is to "influence" people? What little I see of influencers' posts shows me a lot of them do put tons of work in their posts and videos and such, but then I remember it's all done to push people to buy things and it just starts to feel dishonest (as pretty much all advertising does, honestly).
I think "influencer" is just a shiny new word for sales rep.
However your role is largely industry-agnostic, isn’t it? Your role is specific, in the same way that a “vice-president” would have a specific role, but I suspect you’d be as comfortable being “the IT person” for a retailer of paper and stationery as for a supermarket or hotel chain or candy manufacturer? Being “the IT person” describes the skills you bring to the table, and certainly amongst the corporate landscape, there’s not a huge difference between different corporations and industries at that level.
True, I could take an IT role in a different industry as long as it had the type of computers I'm familiar with or otherwise something I could easily learn. I feel like a high level position such as VP would require knowledge more specialized to the industry, but I guess I'm wrong?
I've been trying to consciously make it a point to use consumer in the context of customers being treated or acting like them.
Consumers tolerate ads. Customers hate them.
Businesses treat customers as consumers.
That's the funny thing, that's exactly what a lot of the people who work in marketing at these huge companies think about you. It's disgusting how little respect some people have for the their customers.
Because the people using these social media platforms aren't the customers, they're the product.
I was talking more about companies like Pepsi, Nestle, etc; but you're right.
In the economics context, I think households is a viable alternative too.
To me it always sounds like someone using a term from economic theory to sound more intelligent, whether true or not, in a context where it is not needed.
When I was I high school I worked in a grocery store and the manager would refer to the customers as consumers. That may be why as he was the kind of person to do exactly that.
In the context of economics and consumption of goods I don't mind the term. But probably because then you're taking a more abstract and detached view of the flow of goods, and "consumer" is a nicely generic term.
I'll only use it as a pejorative for myself or others. It's a gross, but unfortunately honest word to describe our role in western society.
Can it be a phrase?
“It is what it is…”
I have a complete and irrational hatred of this phrase. I think it’s due to how so many people use it in situations that really do have a solution. There’s a way to change your situation, you just need to do something, anything to make it better.
Add all thought terminating clichés to this. They're a fantastic way to hold onto cognitive dissonance and avoid becoming a better person.
I really like your explanation because it is a practical one. Yeah, plenty of situations have solutions. There are also many situations in which there is a solution even though that is not immediately apparent.
I have a deep hatred for this phrase too, but perhaps for the opposite reason. I hear it a lot as a response to things that can't really be changed (the weather is making my illness worse, or the current state of the world is stressful) and it feels ... Dismissive, maybe? Of course it is what it is - I am literally telling you a thing that is. Thank you for confirming that I am indeed describing a thing that is. It feels like the verbal equivalent of getting a read receipt and no response to me.
I'll take a nice jovial "Ey, waddayagonnado?" over an "It is what it is" any day of the week
Way she goes...
Even just a validating "Yeah, that does suck." There are a lot of low effort but still substantially less shitty replies to those kinds of topics.
C'est le vie
Have two people in my family who drop this the second it seems like they will have to do anything. It's so predictible and annoying that we all call them the iwits (ee-wits). Fail an exam. "Is what it is". We need a babysitter for the night and they flake out last minute. "Is what it is." Can't figure out why every other person in their life pushes them away. "Is what it is."
I used to hate that phrase, but then I realized:
People use the phrase as an indirect way to state that “it” is bad and can’t get better. But that’s not the phrase; “it is what it is” taken literally means nothing.
So when someone says the phrase and I disagree, I know what they mean, but I like to pretend they are unintentionally or even subconsciously suggesting that “it” can get better and they’re too stubborn to realize. They’re trying to say that the situation is hopeless, but when taken literally, they’re not denying that there’s still hope, and the optimist in me clings onto that.
Alternatively, I can use the phrase in an ironic sense if I know that a situation will improve, to try to shift its perceived meaning back to its literal meaning: nothing.
I don't know that the phrase means that the situation can't get better, just that it's outside of the control of either of you.
If you have a soccer game and it's raining, "it is what it is". The first "it is" being a rainy soccer field, and the second "it is" meaning the unpleasant feeling of playing soccer in the rain. So the phrase just literally means "the situation currently sucks", with the implication being that neither of you can change that, so you should accept it as quickly as possible and move onto things you can change, like the outcome of the soccer game.
The phrase itself is fine to me. The annoying thing is when people use it in situations that they can effect. If someone breaks my window and says "it is what is it", I'm going to immediately get heated, because there's something very obvious that they can do to improve the situation: apologize and pay for my broken window.
Thank you for explaining it like that! A friend gets upset when I describe something negative about my life (that I endure regardless), then after interrogation, state that “it is what it is”. For me, it’s about staying focused on the problems I can meaningfully address: basically anything to do with how humans treat other humans (myself included) falls under the category of “things I need to dismiss and move on from”, since attempting to change people’s opinions and feelings hasn’t been productive (for me).
I think they must have empathized with my situation, but then understood my dismissal of the problem to dismiss their own feelings on the matter. Hadn’t thought of it that way before.
Oh boy do I have a phrase for you
</noise>”He” and “she”, I try to use “they”
Why? My native language doesn’t have gendered pronouns, and in some cases it’s better not to reveal extra information about people when it’s not relevant to the discussion
Speaking of they: I have an (admittedly very minor) gripe with the singular they because it throws a wrench into what is otherwise pretty much the only English conjugation rule: adding an S to verbs conjugated in the third person singular. All the other singular third person pronouns apply the rule as normal (including neopronouns), but using they is grammatically treated as third person plural even if used to refer to a single person. It's still currently the best candidate for a gender neutral pronoun so I'll default to it unless requested otherwise but that bugs me regardless.
I'm not sure how I would go about "fixing" this, though. Conjugating they differently depending on whether it's singular and plural feels just as arbitrarily weird as the current situation (why would we still be using the same word for this pronoun if we're effectively making it two different ones?), removing the third person singular conjugation rule entirely seems like a disproportionately wide change, and introducing a dedicated singular third person pronoun means having to choose what it would be, and presumably if there was a popular enough candidate for adoption we'd already be using it.
(I also usually avoid mentioning my dislike of the singular they because that tends to attract the sort of crowd that has a significantly more malicious motive behind speaking out against its use but that's another subject entirely...)
One of the reasons the present third person singular is the only consistent verb conjugation remaining is that when we began using singular "you", it also retained its original plural conjugations. This is not unusual cross-linguistically -- the same thing happens in German for Sie (and the antiquated Ihr) when they're used formally for singular individuals (this is where singular "you" originated in English fwiw). Verbal agreement is typically with the pronoun, regardless of the referent. Singular "they" is attested earlier than singular "you", and both uphold the consistent pattern of these pronouns retaining their original verbal agreement even after their meaning broadened.
Honestly I think in the long term, eventually English will probably lose that remaining third person singular present tense form in its regular verbs in the coming centuries, because it's weird that it's stuck around so long to begin with. But even before that happens, it's entirely consistent within English grammar to use the same verb forms with "they" whether its referent is singular or plural, just as is done with "you."
I don’t have much to add to the discussion, but I use “they” to hide information that’s not relevant to the conversation (by avoiding “he” or “she”) but I’ve found myself occasionally also using it to hide singular vs plural in the same way (e.g. if it’s not particularly relevant that you know whether I was talking to one person or a few people on the weekend at minigolf)
I'll note that this is generally considered perfectly fine and valid, unless the person in question has explicitly requested to not be referred to as "they". @creesch for example almost always refers to people on Tildes using "they" as well, likely for various reasons - and creesch is far from the only person to do this.
For example I'm very explicit about not being referred to as "they" anymore, as it is the pronoun I used for myself all my life before gender transitioning, and to me, that person is dead and I do not wish to be associated with them. I exclusively use she/her now, and when someone uses they/them for me I attempt to make it clear that I would rather be referred to using a gendered pronoun.
Granted, I come from and live in a place with a very gendered language, to the point that it's impossible not to give this information away
Yup, it makes most sense in most cases to me. Certainly on the internet you often don't know someone's preferences for pronoun. Even if I think I know, I generally only specific pronouns when people themselves have been fairly explicit about it.
My only issue with "they" as a pronoun is that it also has the meaning of referencing a group.
More broadly, this is one of those things where I just adjust based on the preferences people. To be clear, the preferences about how I refer to them. I never really got why people have an issue respecting personal preferences here.
I try to avoid "they" when referring to gender neutrality because it feels extremely awkward to use in that fashion. I'll rather use some other terms if possible, like the person's name or the word "person" apparently. "He or she" is about as awkward, and of course doesn't even mean the same thing.
Note that although I'm very fluent in English, I'm not a native speaker and only speak it at work. Native speakers, I assume, may have heard and used the word in actual life enough that it sounds perfectly natural to them.
Oh, and yeah: my native language doesn't have gendered pronouns either. But English is English for me.
"They" does sound natural to me. And it has been used this way for literally centuries. It's not new. You surely use it when you don't think about it just fine - when you hear someone knocking on your door but you don't know who they are. One person, still: who are they?
I'm here to pick a nit, or actually ask a question, but picking nits is more fun...
In my head the "correct" phrase for your specific example is:
But there are many other examples, who, unfortunately, don't come to mind right now.
(Non-native speaker)
"There's someone standing outside our door."
"What are they doing?"
A common example I've seen for natural use of singular-they: imagine you're in a library and you find a backpack that somebody obviously left behind. You bring it to the librarian and say, "Somebody left their backpack behind."
This sentence is perfectly natural for most native speakers, and the alternative possessive pronoun options are way more stilted by comparison.
"Who is it?" and "Who are they?" definitely aren't synonymous, fwiw. They're both natural English, but there are scenarios where the former works and not the latter, and vice-versa.
For example, if someone knocked on the door, I might yell "Who is it?" And they might answer "It's DefinitelyNotAFae" (in which case I won't be opening the door...)
But I'd never ask "Who are they"? As it's clearly third person.
Is there a term for something like "who is it" (and I suppose "It's me") because I'm not sure I could explain why that sentence structure works. It exists in French too so I know it isn't unique but it's interesting
There's probably a specific term for it, but I don't know it off the top of my head, unfortunately.
Ah thanks, will seek knowledge elsewhere!
If I uncover the term I'll def reply here to let you know! It's extra frustrating not knowing the terminology because it would definitely be within my specialization from when I did linguistics 😅
Does "expletive it" sound correct for explaining them? We have to have a subject so we throw "it* in there for no reason?
Or "syntactic expletive"perhaps?
I googled but don't know that I understand anything lol
Hm, I'm not sure whether you could call this an expletive it. It definitely seems to share some qualities with it, but expletive "it" more prototypically describes uses of "it" where it truly doesn't have a referent, as in phrases like "it seems like things are getting weird" or "it's raining." I think it's possible that the "it" in "Who is it?" might be referential, since you could replace "it" with a longer description like "Who is the person knocking on the door?" But it's definitely a weird situation, so I'll do a little bit of digging to see if there's something more specific that describes this one.
Why does it sound so awkward, I wonder?
I would definitely say something like "who is that?"
I'll try to think of a situation where I'd naturally use "they" in this sense, I'll edit this if I get something.
edit Yeah well I guess the situation would be that if there's an actual non-binary person and I would need to refer to them with a pronoun. I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid using the word "they". I know that's the correct word even if it sounds weird to me.
It typically doesn't for native speakers when used to refer to an unknown or unspecified individual -- even the most strident "anti-woke" person will use it this way without even noticing they've done it. While using it this way has been discouraged in some formal English classes (especially in the past, but not the far past -- my textbooks definitely explicitly told us to use "he or she" or worse, to default to "he"), in practice it has been in widespread use in this way for an incredibly long time. If using "they" this way feels awkward to someone, they have internalized it from overly-prescriptive formal English education that doesn't reflect even the modern formal standards for using English, much less how it's used day-to-day by native speakers.
Using singular "they" for a specific person, typically someone who is nonbinary, is relatively new by comparison. This can feel awkward when it's new and unfamiliar -- it even did for me, and I'm nonbinary and use they/them pronouns myself! But extrapolating from the existing use of singular "they" to this new use is a much easier adaptation for most English speakers to make than, for instance, introducing neopronouns, and it's fairly easy to adapt to with practice. What discomfort there is in getting used to using it this way is significantly less important in the grand scheme of things than showing basic respect to people who prefer they/them pronouns.
It's annoying enough seeing it in a written context where "they" is just plain more efficient, but I know someone who seems to make a point of saying it out loud... It's like time slows down for those three syllables. Metal on my ears.
I want to give a different answer to why it feels awkward than just not being used to it: it is awkward. Singular they often comes with the connotation of unknowingness. This makes it awkward sounding specifically when you have knowledge.
As an example, if I ask my mom, "Where's dad?" and she responded, "They went to the store" then I'd follow up with "Oh, who with?" or something. This is because I know she knows his pronouns and it would be weird for her to refer to him by a singular they. So it doesn't function as gender neutral singular in all cases.
Cases like this do make singular they awkward. It is historically super normal for unknowns, but can behave differently when knowledge is present. In fact, with knowledge it can go so far as to be misgendering someone when used singularly.
This also can make people confused about hearing singular they when referring to someone because of not knowing if that was an intentionally chosen pronoun or if was the result of lacking knowledge. To give a concrete example, if I were to say "Skurry is a Hollow Knight streamer. They do a lot of randomizer runs." You cannot tell if I used "they" due to not knowing Skurry's pronouns or because Skurry prefers "they". Skurry does prefer they, but if I knew that they had a different preference and I still knowingly chose to use singular they in my example then I would have been misgendering.
Or another example. If you ask me, "Where is Alex?" and I respond, "They're over there" did I just tell you Alex's pronouns? Historical usage is "no", today's usage is "maybe". The historical usage actually carries a bunch of baggage that isn't really representable with just the connotation anymore. Historically my "They're over there" is really more like "Alex is over there and I don't know Alex well enough to provide pronouns to you."
This stuff does make it awkward.
This type of awkwardness is, fwiw, the distinction I'm describing in my comment about use for an unknown or unspecified person vs. using it for a specific known person. Your examples do a good job of illustrating that here, I think! Finding this new usage of singular "they" for specific people awkward is completely understandable, as it does not have a history of use in that context. Getting used to it through practice is still worth it, imo, but this is why this particular use of singular "they" is something that one needs to get used to in the first place.
One time I commonly use it is if I’m referring to someone whose job is titled (e.g. a cashier), but the person has a follow up question.
Or when referring to drivers of cars.
Both of those are times when using a gendered pronoun is incorrect, since the gender of the person being referred to is unknown. And while growing up sometimes people would surely default to “he”, “they” both flows more naturally, and isn’t uncommon.
That’s an interesting and personal question, unfortunately! What an individual speaker considers to be typical is strongly biased by their social context: there is not “one” English, only a murky cloud of intelligibility that varies based on people and places. For example, try listening to someone with a thick Irish accent — if you’re not used to it, it might not seem like they’re speaking English at all!
IMO languages belong to their speakers. If enough people start using the singular they, then that’s how the language works. Unless you’re an airplane pilot, no one has a monopoly on grammaticality; it’s up to speakers to conclude (often subconsciously, unless it comes up in The Culture War) what words to say, in which order, in whatever cases.
Perhaps similarly, it was a little difficult for me to start using "they" for gender inclusivity in English. That is because, like all romance languages, Portuguese has grammatical gender. Meaning that, in Portuguese, "gender" often does not mean personal identity, and serves as a differentiator for things which have no gender. Like a "pencil" (lápis, masculine) or a "chair" (cadeira, feminine).
Ya, the gendered objects are weird 😀
There was a content creator who asked Macron (the president of France) the gender of random things and he got zero right 😆
Same with German, some people (in Berlin?) are using “dit” instead of das/der/die because they can’t be arsed to remember whether a bank is male or female
I can see how that may sound weird for those coming from languages where gender always means personal identity. It helps if you understand that these words are not really gendered in that sense. These are two modes for differentiating words. We don't think pencils are dudes :P
Yeah, it's honestly a weird coincidence of Indo-European historical linguistics that what we call "grammatical gender" is associated with the social concept of gender at all. Linguists often use the alternative term "noun class" to describe the same grammatical concept to avoid confusion on this front, especially in other languages where the classes tend to be even less associated with the social concept of gender.
It's only relatively recently (around the 1960s or so) that this confusion has arisen. Before that, "gender" simply referred to noun class.
I suspect it may have been because "having sex" had become such a widespread euphemism that it was no longer considered a euphemism, and so people felt a bit squicky saying "sex" in polite contexts.
The word "gender" originally means "kind, type, a class sharing certain traits" and comes from the Old French "gendre" (which became Modern French "genre"). While the connection between this and grammatical gender is much clearer, it was used far more broadly than that, and using the word to refer to "male-or-female sex" is attested from the 15th century. "Gender" began to replace "sex" in the 20th century (and this was because the word "sex" had begun to be used to describe erotic things), but "gender" had been used synonymously with "sex" for centuries by then. The distinction between "gender" as describing social attributes and "sex" as describing biological ones is what originates in the 60s -- they were previously synonymous in this sense.
Unfortunately this means that the conflation of noun classes with lexical gender is not so recent either.
ime the number of genders doesn't honestly change the difficulty of internalizing grammatical gender much. It's the "having to memorize it for every word because you don't have the intuition for it that native speakers have" that's frustrating no matter how many buckets you've got to sort things into imo.
I've gotten to an okay level in German and I've tried the "use plural all the time to avoid gender" trick, but German has a ton of ways to form plurals and you also often have to memorize those because they're not always transparent from the singular... which makes them not much easier than memorizing the gender unfortunately. Now I just confidently use the wrong gender and hope I'm understood.
That's a better trick than mine.
Which is confidently saying any gender that sounds alright and continuing like nothing happened.
I've largely switched to that tactic myself over time lol
By and large people don't care. Being non-native means you're allowed mistakes anyway. Be stridently incorrect!
It's a good strategy, if a bit telling that you can't be arsed to learn it properly.
Being native Dutch helps somewhat but not nearly enough to be right more than half of the time.
I really appreciate this! My passion really is for linguistics, and I'm currently really pondering whether I want to return to the academic world for it or not. There's something fascinating about language that grabs me the way nothing else can. It's a shame you didn't have the opportunity to study it formally, but feel free to DM me if you'd like me to share some pdfs of books on Germanic historical linguistics that I've got lying around.
If you have a community college near you there might be some options! If/when my work load or personal load lightens, I want to take a few academic classes but also a "how to repair drywall" class
When I studied German in middle school and high school and we had to memorize vocabulary, we never learned words like "cat" or "dog". It was always "the cat" and "the dog" so that we would automatically connect the gender to the word.
But there were two words that always threw me off: "der Junge" (boy, masculine gender) and "das Mädchen" (girl, neutral gender). The "e" on "Junge" made me instinctively want to use the feminine gender, but it has a special exception. And that would make me think the "chen" on "Mädchen" must have a special exception, too, but nope.
Words that end in -chen and -lein are always neutrum. This is true no matter what the original gender was. Once I learned this I was less bothered by Mädchen.
The -e ending is helpful for straight-up guessing the gender if you don't know it, but there's enough exceptions besides just "Junge" that you can't rely on it always being feminine unfortunately. It's only often the case that a noun ending in -e is feminine.
Most German textbooks do list the articles and plural forms when they teach you new vocabulary, but memorizing individual words with flashcards has never really suited me. I tend to learn words from encountering them in context these days, which sometimes helps with the gender but unfortunately not always.
Don't know if this counts as non-problematic, but the word "problematic". Especially in the context of a person. It's just a very charged word and the dictionary definition is very broad next to the cultural associations. Even in the context of the question, a problematic word is one relating to a history of prejudice and discrimination by all metrics. Race, nationality, gender, sexuality, religion, mental state, age... . So we associate problematic behaviour with the same sort of prejudice. Unfortunately, that line can be very different for a lot of people.
With that in mind we could have "They exhibited problematic behaviour: [list of things the subject did]". But depending on the listeners interpretation of the word and the contents of the list, it can be understood as: "They exhibited problematic behaviour AND [list of things the subject did]."
Edit: forgot to add the corporate/tech buzz-terms that drove me nuts:
Brand activation, money pile, immersive experience, wholistic, strong feelings.
I agree. “Problematic” is essentially just a pretentious version of “bad”, and although usually associated with social justice themes it doesn’t specify at all the reason for a thing being bad. It’s too all-encompassing and doesn’t add information. Essentially I feel it’s almost lazy in the pursuit of sounding more academic.
It really feels like subjective feelings masquerading as an objective take in many cases.
I'd be happy to return it to my lexicon if I didn't hear it so often being used to disguise personal feelings about something a person doesn't like as common wisdom.
Holistic isn't necessarily a business term but I understand your aversion to it, though perhaps for a different reason.
It means to look at something from all angles, but it sounds like I'm spiritually intuiting some meaning from it.
It gets to me on two fronts. The first is as marketing fluff that preys on people who are genuinely looking for a deeper spiritual or health element in their lives. I don't think you can make holistic candy or holistic dating sites, especially when it's all down to a maximum profit motive.
And then it comes from working corporate, where holistic came across as a nice way of saying, "You should be doing full-stack, admin, building maintenance and getting my coffee. No, we're not paying you a cent more for it."
I'll add the phrase "customer delight". I don't know who coined this phrase, but I'm absolutely sure it was some asshole that wrote a book that MBAs are obsessed with, and also don't care enough to confirm that. I'm so tired of hearing it.
The phrase brings to mind a little fat boy wiggling his fingers in glee as he gets handed a gigantic lolipop. That's decidedly not the scene that's happening when your customer base sees that you made the "ok" button 10% rounder on your app.
"Customer delight" came from the same late Web 2.0 period circa 2010 - 2013 that gave us "brand ambassador", "folksonomy", "convergence", "knowledge economy" and assorted other bits of industry jargon.
I believe the word "problematic" means two things. One, that something is "likely to cause problems". Second, that something is "likely to cause problematization". By which I mean, a process of continuous analysis of the problem that has a recursive nature.
I think this is exactly right.
I grew up using "problematic" in the sense of, "The car just broke down on my way to work. Oh dear, this is problematic..." as you imagine the long cascade of self-multiplying problems that are about to ensue.
I like the way you think. That gave me another idea.
In the realm of discourse, "problematic" is not always a negative. It could mean that something is complex in a way that elicits a process of continuous analysis, reinforcing its core themes through an apparently endless succession of logical arguments. For instance, the concept of "truth" is most certainly worthy of consideration. It is also problematic in the sense that it can be discussed indefinitely. In other words, after each problem is resolved, another comes up. Again and again.
Veggies. I’m not sure why but I have an intense aversion to the word “veggies”. Just say vegetables.
Well, see, "Veggies" are the ones that talk and tell Bible stories. "Vegetables" are the ones you eat. They're completely different.
I almost snorted my water out my nose.
+1
Can I also mention "tendies"? I'm not a native speaker but.. how is that a word adults use lol
Tendies is like semi-ironic. Post ironic? It started on 4chan, when people mocked man-children who were stereotyped to only eat chicken nuggets and tenders by saying "tendies". Then it had the linguistic transformation where people said it ironically so much that they began to use it unironically.
At least there is ironic origins of "tendies". The goddamn FDA will say "veggies".
I am not a native English speaker, but perhaps it sounds childish?
Do you say the 3 syllable veg-tab-les or the 4 syllable ve-ge-tab-les?
What about "veg"?
Vegetables: An important food group
Veggies: Childish, makes an adult sound like a fool
Veg: Calls to mind "sludge" or "slop."
Isn’t veggie a diminutive form of vegetable?
Is veggies really that bad if the alternative is something like “Timmy, eat your veglets.” or “Timmy, eat your vegkins.”
I'll be using veglets tonight. Not for kids, just to amuse myself
Ah, I think I agree! The word “vegetables” is a plural of distinct individual items. Countable. You can have a number of vegetables.
But the word “veg” is a continuous non-discrete substance. Uncountable. You can have an amount of veg, but never a number of veg.
Just like you can have a number of rolled oats, and can count them, but you can’t have a number of porridge, only an amount of porridge.
Veg just sounds British enough to me that it feels odd to use.
Like it's over the line from "I've picked up linguistic bits and bobs from TV" into saying things like "wot" or "innit" and would feel very fake.
I'm fine with veg. It's practically absent in everyday American English so when someone says "veg" I just think of Indian restaurants.
My partner says "Avos" and it kills me. Just say the whole word please!
What is that whole word supposed to be? All I can think of is the Russian concept of avos.
Avocados
That's ridiculous.
A discord group of mine got into a half-serious tiff over calling pepperoni on pizza "pep". I am anti-pep (it could mean pepper!), but then one day on Scrandle someone called it pep. I've admitted defeat.
Oh, well, good to know you're pro-depression and stuff ;-)
Back in my Domino's days in the 90s, the 'supreme' pizza was the Extravaganza. Obviously with a name like that, it's gonna have a shorter nickname because ain't nobody saying that a thousand times on busy Friday/Saturdays.
I learned it as the "Extrav", and that was fine. It ruffled my feathers when I met people from other stores who referred to it as the "'Ganza". lol. I don't know why other than I learned it one way and that was different.
Not sure I could handle "pep" either, though, in fairness. :)
In other places I could see the confusion, but with pizza pep is a pretty common abbreviation.
Plus I think just pepper is too broad, is it bell peppers, pepperchini, hungarian wax, jalapenos, chili pepper flakes, ground black pepper, in could be anything.
It is. Obviously the more correct way to shorten it is "cados".
And if you only have one, "cauno".
ಠ_ʖಠ
¯\_( ͠° ͟ʖ °͠ )_/¯
Tummy because my wife hates it due to an obese ex-coworker that apparently wouldn't shut up about her tummy.
I hate the word bruh because I had a terrible pandemic roommate that used the word for everything.
I know I'm old but I never got on board with bro, and bruh actively pisses me off. Lol
Lately I've started using "bro" ironically in close company, and just yesterday I told my partner that I need to be careful with that. Things you start saying or doing ironically can become habitual, and then you're just saying or doing the thing unironically and you've completed the circle and become one of the people you were originally making fun of.
Dare I say, that would be a certified bruh moment
</noise>Yeah, careful with that one. I went through a phase of calling thing's "cash money" like 10 years ago because of that slippery slope. I came dangerously close to doing the same thing with calling things "fire" recently.
I completed the ironic-to-serious journey with bro specifically.
I suppose there could be much much worse examples of that. At least this is one that is actually and unironically used commonly, so no real harm. lol
The boomer spelling ;)
You might hate me then, lol. I ironically started using "bruh" when it was in the public's lexicon but then I kept unironically using it and I've been permanently brain poisoned to where it's an every day word for me now, ha.
Hah! I'm edging your situation right now! It's a slippery slope, thanks for sharing your story 🙃
It's arguable if this is a non-problematic word, but for a long time I hated how people used the word "hacking" (and other forms of it, including "hack"). To be clear, I'm referring to the context of computer/technology hacking.
When people started to referring to guessing passwords (not even brute force) resulting in "hacking into a Facebook account," I groaned pretty hard. There's no technical skill involved in that. But now the legal definition is just unauthorized access, so my previous feelings on the word are invalid.
Agreed. I especially hate how in the software community “hackers” has become acceptable terminology for a scrappy developer. No thank you!
"Hacker" meant something closer to "scrappy developer" a long time before it came to refer to unauthorised access. It has its roots in the MIT model railroad club, if I recall correctly. "The Jargon File" has some oral history of the term.
See: https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
There even was another word specifically to differentiate: cracker. I've never looked into the etymology, but have always assumed it to just be basically the same idea as a safe cracker but for IT systems.
Depending on who you ask the distinction still exists, but in my opinion cracker has basically fallen out of use and hacker has unfortunately absorbed both definitions.
And to take it even further, back in the dialup days we had Phreakers (phone freaks) that would manipulate the phone lines for various results.
Edit: now I think about it I assume phreakers were messing with phone lines even before dial up and adsl. That would be before my time though
Gulch. It’s just a gross sounding word.
Works for Blood Gulch though!
You’ve got it wrong, gulch is a great woody word. Gulch. Guuulch. Guuuulllllllch.
Not tinny at all.
I'm really bad at avoiding this word, which makes it the word I most actively avoid using: "just" (as in "just do X"). In part because I've noticed I use it to often but moreover because it's almost always unnecessary filler. I fear it adds unintended baggage to the ideas you put with it, especially when used in a conversation.
Oh god, I do this too, and I don't know how to stop! I can't seem to get a handle on the situations in which my brain wants to insert the word "just" in order to fix it.
It's easy: just stop. ;-)
🤣🤣🤣 Got me!
I see it as a minimizer. “Can’t you just…” usually leads to a conversation explaining why that’s impossible; adding the word just doesn’t make it easy.
I was brought up to use it to show something I did or meant isn’t a big deal. “I just meant …” can also come off as backpedaling, or at least sounds defensive. After being thanked for doing something, instead of saying, “You’re welcome,” we minimize what we did. “Thank you for cleaning the house!” “I just swept and did the dishes.”
I managed to break this habit a few years ago, but now it’s back and is very annoying.
When it's not filler, it's a) oversimplifying a situation that's actually much more complex than the requestor realizes, or b) serving to frustrate the reader who now feels like they're being talked down to because they didn't "just" do the thing already.
this is mine as well! I hate the word 'just' so much!
:(
haha present company excluded! <3
Crypto-fascist. Makes me sound like a complete git.
Totally shady!
Ommmm!
Except that we now have genuine Crypto fascists.
Young Lister was ahead of his time!
The only Lister I know is from Red Dwarf. I assume this would be a different Lister? lol
That would be him.
Technically the actor playing young Lister is not Craig Charles, so technically a different Lister. hehe
I'd forgotten about this bit. Or maybe it's from ones I hadn't gotten around to seeing. Either way I gotta get the whole series and watch from the start now :)
Words that have been ruined, to my ear, by business English abuse as buzzwords:
When uttered or written by corporate drones, I've observed that these specific words have been so overused and misplaced that they've lost all of their original meaning. There are many mockable business clichés and buzzphrases in circulation, but I know it's safe to ignore anything that follows the items on my list. I'll be a snob about a person who uses "impactful" even if it's a real word, and feel fully justified from experience.
touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase touchbase NEEDFUL NEEDFUL
(ahh ask an ask! aaaask an aaaask, ohhhhh it's an aaaask, it's a-)
Dammit, I'm old enough to recognize that. Well done, you.
Also, why for the love of all things squirmy did "necessary" become "needful"?
"Doing the needful" is an artifact of Indian English, which they got as a now-archaic British English terminology, and I guess it's circled back around to general business usage in some spheres.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/idioms/do-the-needful/
Brilliant. Will also submit a relevant 2014 Weird Al
I mostly agree with your list except for "actionable", simply because I love throwing it back against certain (manager) types in the sentence "That sounds great, how do you propose to make this actionable?". It is the closest I can get to outright just telling them that their proposals are nothing but baked air lacking substance.
I don't dislike actionable, in the context you've given examples for.
but I dislike actionables.
I first encountered "actionable" in its original legal context, that is, something subject to or grounds for legal action, or as a justification for doing something - e.g. "actionable information". As /u/creesh implies, it's become a shorthand for "tasks we're going to do but don't know what or how yet".
This one hasn't exactly been ruined, because it never should have existed: ask as a noun.
"What's the ask?"
"Did you get the email with Susan's ask for the project?"
Disgusting, but omnipresent. I refuse to say it.
I empathize, and now you've gotten me started... I'm in an organization that's in love with misappropriated football and military jargon, as well as business bullshit. Recent examples:
"refined our brand positioning statement to clearly reflect our business identity"
"As shared during the Kickoff Meeting, our team is focused on rolling out the Synergy Program"
"strategically aligning our resources to meet our growth objectives"
The documents these came from are holographically devoid of meaning - the samples are representative of the whole.
Can I also admit how much I despise "KPIs"?
Weird hill to die on, but "App" is so unnecessary.
It's an application. It's a program. It's software.
Thank you.
I don't mind "app," but I loathe when people say "coding" or refer to programmers as "coders."
It's like calling a surgeon a scalpeller or an architect a blueprinter. I won't demean your profession if you'll extend the same courtesy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sudden realization that calling surgery "scalpeling" is absolutely the kind of silliness I strive for.
-- a computer toucher
Do more people find "coding" and "coder" demeaning? I thought it was more like the difference between "artist" and "artisan". Most artists are also artisans, and sometimes call themselves artisans. Not every artisan calls themselves "artists". But that doesn't mean that artists are necessarily superior to artisans.
Personally I don't take issue with it. We collectively have been granted so many titles that they all feel relatively meaningless now. For example, all it takes to get titles like "engineer" in software is to work at a company that decides not to bother with role titles like 'Front End Developer' when they can just call everyone 'Software Development Engineer'.
Product.
A guy I know was talking about using some material (flooring, glue, paint, I don't recall) in a home reno he was doing and referred to it as a good "product". It rubbed me the wrong way how he referred to the thing not as a good version of that thing; he referred to it as a good *product*.
If I need a generic word for "thing you can buy" then usually "item" works. Off the top of my head I can't think of anywhere else I might have to use product.
Totally agree! If the same word can be used for shampoo and software, it's time to find another word.
You would hate that the pro sports crowd on the internet constantly criticizes the games as "bad product." Yes, the infernal phrase also ditches the article. Gag me.
I very much dislike the word "utilize" in most contexts. 99% of the time "use" would be better suited, and it just sounds like someone is trying to sound smart.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/143941/when-to-use-use-and-when-to-use-utilize-in-a-sentence
This is the first one I've seen in this thread that I really agree with, but oh boy do I agree.
There are very few instances where I would suggest "utilize" instead of "use" (they do have subtly different meanings), but it almost never comes up.
Said in a real life context, absolutely. I hate that algospeak has to exist. Fortunately, I've curated my content creator sphere to not have to hear it for the mostpart.
Meanwhile I feel like I have to know it, both because I follow mental health content and work with college students who post things online. Knowing the slang they use, even or maybe especially to get around filters, is important.
Anything that ends in -ly. No, really!
The majority of them are trash used by people trying to sound smart. Kill adverbs, kill adjectives, the worst of them end with an -ly so they are easy to spot. I'd say my top offender is 'actually' which makes me cringe when I see it now. Just delete all of them in the next Tildes post you make and watch your apparent IQ go up by one standard deviation. It's magic. This is one of Stephen King's top two writing tricks - the other is to delete ten percent of your first draft to make the second draft.
It makes for concise, fast prose that's a pleasure to read.
Erm. Sorry.
When you're going for brevity, sure. When you need emphasis and tone and a weasel word, really and actually and probably are all excellent.
I personally prefer written language to resemble spoken language to a reasonable extent, rather than diverge off into its own grammatical norms. It starts to come across as "writery", in almost exactly the same way that some movies are "actory".
People use words like "actually" in spoken language to shape the connotation of their speech. Connotation is particularly difficult (see what I did there?) to communicate in a written context, so I don't see why we should tie one hand behind our back as well.
As an exercise, I challenged myself to reword your sentence to obviate the need for "particularly" but carrying the same connotation, and came up empty. I think I'll stick with my -lys.
I would say, if you're going for quality prose, follow King's advice and drop almost all adverbs. If rather than quality your goal is to be weassely, to convince someone or strike a certain tone, then sure go wild.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/03/13/stephen-king-on-adverbs/
After having read this, he's right. I'm a timid writer looking to leave gaps to that let me escape from poor writing or insufficient supporting evidence. I should stop doing that.
“Go quickly!” or “Go with quickness!” when how is important information to communicate to the audience? Surely brevity occasionally means heading down to Lolly’s to get your adverbs:
Admittedly, I may start paragraphs criminally often with admittedly.
....
Ya, I don't think its working /s
Did you use "really" in your second sentence deliberately for irony?
Surely not :)
If I don't say "genuinely" I get accused of being "obtuse"/"sarcastic"/ "dishonest" /"playing devil's advocate", etc.
I utterly loathe the word 'sammich'. Perhaps because some of the most annoying people I've ever known thought they were being cute by using it, but the only constant was that their mere presence was akin to a splinter in the eyeball, they were that aggravating.
Even typing this out has raised my blood pressure a little. :D Just say sandwich, dammit!
I once joked about mispronoucing words intentionally, for annoying-cute, and unfortunately "evelator" (elevator) seems to have stuck, and I need a second to figure out which is the proper word forevermore. I respect your insistence on proper language use.
I sniped myself once the same way with nuclear/nucular. It's been decades, and I still trip on it sometimes. Lesson learned! :D
Hmm, yes, but how do you feel about
sangwich?
Hmm... Not quite as bad, but definitely on a borderline somewhere. :D
(A brief google turned this up, which is interesting! https://www.grillsdetaronja.com/en/sandwich-vs-sangwich/ )
Love me a sanger.
I really don't like when people call the aggregate of children "kiddos". It started with a co-worker I got the creeps from constantly referring to children ages 0-11 (COVID vaccine/data meetings) as "kiddos", and everyone else started using it. It comes across as very condescending/forced to me. Especially in the somewhat clinical setting we were operating in, I just felt like "children" was a perfectly fine word.
That is one that in my opinion is fine only when it's your own kids. I think I even internalize it as meaning someone's own kids to the extent that if I heard someone say "the kiddos ___" I'd treat that the same as "my kids ___".
"Learnings" for "what we learned" really grates for some reason. Other alternatives might be "findings" or "conclusions" or "key points."
Hard agree. And to add an alternative - in many cases - "lessons". For example, "what were the lessons from the crowdstrike catastrophe?".
It's odd, but I've been avoiding saying the b-word (spoilered if that's too ambiguous)
bitch
I have started to use "in fairness" because on Reddit a lot of the time, saying "to be fair" results in a sub thread referencing some TV show where they said like "to be faaaaaaaiiiirrrrr" or something. Trailer Park boys it something? To be fair, I don't care the source. Hehe
Letterkenny
To be fair, the source is actually pretty good.
Letterkenny, fun Canadian show and the "to be fair" bit is fairly fun as well.
Bespoke, irregardless, concatenate, kayfabe, vocal fry. They cause confusion or sound annoying and/or crappy to the ear.
I refuse to believe that irregardless is a real word. And it irritates me that kayfabe is a word and that was obviously just pulled out of thin air.
You’ve completely lost me with the other words though. I use concatenate all the time. There isn’t another word that can be used for it. Bespoke is logical but there isn’t a very common use for it. And vocal fry is something I find incredibly petty for people to talk about.
There's a phrase for this, and it's been around since 1817: suspension of disbelief.
Eh, kayfabe isn't quite the same as suspension of disbelief; the audience engages in suspension of disbelief, the performers engage in kayfabe.* So they're related, but I can't think of another word or phrase that accurately encompasses the idea of kayfabe.
*This is how I understand the word, as someone who is bored to tears by actual wrestling but is fascinated by the drama surrounding it. I also like linguistics, and have spent way too much time trying to trace the etymology of kayfabe lol.
In vtuber circles, keyfabe is used to talk about vtubers playing things up for views and engagement. It's an allusion to steaming being a performance (a la wrestling). It has a unique meaning.
Irregardless is not a real word except in the possible sense that it is a common mistake, and arguably if we are descriptivist about language, then it is real. But still wrong.:)
I like bespoke when used to indicate something is being made custom for a single client. To me it is the perfect word.
Of course it isn't. The correct word is irregardlessly.
I'm irregardlessly downvoting your post. >:-P
Overirregardentatedly.
I'm sure they have uses, but words must make me unusually emotional because I adore the sound of some while others are like the aural equivalent of burning my shins on AstroTurf.
'Nauseous'.
Originally, the word actually meant 'causing nausea', not 'feeling nausea' - for instance, you might have encountered 'a nauseous smell' as you enter a public restroom. I think this meaning is more fitting for a word which, to me, sounds particularly nauseous, with its sickly-soft post-alveolar fricative 'sh' sound. It's even more nauseous when certain people pronounce this as a voiced fricative, 'zh'.
I'll still use 'nauseous' to convey its original meaning, which more or less amounts to avoiding it - it's much more common for me to use the word 'nauseated', which is what people who use the word 'nauseous' typically ought to be using. It's such a useful distinction, and I'm sad English speakers no longer tend to observe it.
Also, fun fact, the etymology of 'nausea' comes from the Greek word 'naus' meaning ship, on which one might feel nauseated due to seasickness. This makes 'nausea' and 'nautical' a linguistic doublet.
For me, the only thing "nauseous" and "nauseated" have in common is their root word.
If I say I'm nauseated, I'm expressing revulsion. If I say I'm nauseous, I'm looking for a bucket.
I have never been so nauseated by something that it has induced nausea.
Out of curiosity, are you an American? I feel like the tone of the phrase really depends on the country.
My surname is an adjective, so I'm inclined to find synonyms to stop others from seeing me as weirdly self-referential.
I absolutely loathe the words "luscious" and "decadent". Not just because I hate the weirdo marketing tendency to sexualize food--every time I see someone in a commercial take the tiniest nibble of a Lindor chocolate and pretend to have a full-body orgasm, I cringe so hard my spine snaps in two places--but I hate the way they sound in my ear.
Partly, I think, because the terms have lost most meaningful relevance outside of the food thing, so they sound kind of like weasel words to me if they're used in any other context, and gross within that context. Partly because the literal phonemes just sound slimy to hear. I can't explain it any better than that.
Up there with "mouth-watering" for me. So gross.
Yes, totally--which reminds me I also hate the word "craveable", which unfortunately my phone spellcheck recognizes as a word despite it being purely a marketing neologism.
Welcome to the weird-ass world of misophonia! I literally can't hear the word "luscious" without feeling like someone stuck their tongue in my ear.
"The feels". I've heard the phrase so many times in the early 2010s to that I broadly assume media is going to be kinda predictable, hackeneyed, cheap, etc if someone says a show/game/etc gave them the feels in a conversation without actually giving any lead on why it had impact. (spoilers aside? I guess? Then I assume it's entirely on shock value...)
EDIT: Clarity per reply.
This one affects me in some kind of way… ;-)
Because it mocks emotional responses and short-circuits their expression in more detail, usually in the context of a masculine-presenting person suffering?
I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but if I am reading that right, I would suggest better word choice to represent genuine suffering than 4chan meme slang.
I'm mainly talking about media discussion or interpretation, so apologies that wasn't clearer - I primarily see it in that context. In an IRL conversation I'd just keep talking about it appropriately. But in an open forum or article where you're actively trying to relate or describe emotional response, something made to be so uselessly vague by intention doesn't do anything for that. I find it's filler unless you're deliberately trying to mask your feelings with irony.
Also not sure what you mean by masculine connotation, aside from the connection to soyjack macros and 4chan; I've heard my wife utter the dark phrase, even though she's pretty disconnected from terminally-online spaces. Seems to me like ubiquitous, gender-nonspecific jargon.
I've heard men (usually young) including a transman acquaintance, using "the feels" self- or other- mockingly in conversation, not just seen the phrase as meme slang. When someone uses it regarding their own experiences, it does seem like masking genuine emotion with irony.
I don't think I've yet encountered "the feels" in general media discourse.
Glizzy
I don't like it. It's (DC?) slang for a gun but has become slang for a hotdog and I like it even less.
Why.
I avoid using the word "perfect" because it is an absolute concept, making it less useful in many situations. For example, when someone says "I am not perfect," it feels like a vacuous statement. That is because, of course, no one is perfect. A related statement would be "I am not God!", which is obvious and truistic.
I avoid using the word "art" because it is profoundly polysemic and mutable. In many situations "art" is way too broad to be useful. I find discussions about what is or isn't art unproductive, and often pedantic and elitist. I'd rather use the name of the specific form of expression, such as "film" or "literature," instead.
This is more of a thing in Portuguese for me, but I avoid using "maturidade" (maturity) if I can. It is a very imprecise concept, and its meaning is highly individual. It tends to muddle the waters and provoke discussions that are both heated and unproductive. Concepts of "maturidade" tend to be very prescriptive and are often used to judge and demean everyone whose life circumstances don't align with their particular definition.
Doesn't this imply that art can't be a profession? I don't think anyone would find it pedantic or elitist if a scientist were to say of some pseudo-scientific paper "This isn't science".
The vast majority of people who say something is or is not art are not themselves artists, certainly not professionally, and it's far more common for someone who has never stopped to think about the definition of art to decry something as "not art" due to either its quality or because they just don't "get" it. This assessment tends to be completely disconnected from the definition of art you'd learn in, for instance, art school.
The definition of "science" as used by scientists is also a lot more specific and concrete than the definition of "art" as used by artists.
The definition of science may be fairly robust to scientists but laypeople are often unable to grasp it well enough to actually make use of the term, or its underlying concepts (which is why it's so easy to appear convincing on YouTube by presenting seemingly scientific claims that are actually nonsense). This applies even to some people with scientific education/background because not everyone is rigorous enough to apply it properly at all times, even if capable to do so.
There is also perpetual disagreement between scientists regarding which fields or methods represent "real" science. I don't see it all too different from how artist communities attempt to define art. The main difference I can find is that while you seem to be looking for a scientific definition for art, I'm not requiring an artistically informed take on the definition of science and calling scientists elitist when they fail to provide one.
I'm okay with a non-artist refraining from using the word personally, but not okay with being put down if I wish to discuss some basic principles that make me a professional in my field.
I have no idea where you come to the conclusion that I want a scientific definition of art. The definition of art I personally operate under is one that at least takes heavy influence from my friends who studied in art school, who would talk to me about the stuff they were learning and discussing in their classes, and it's an extremely inclusive definition. In my opinion anyone who claims that something isn't art is usually wrong and almost always pretentious because 99.99999% of the time they're using inclusion in the category "art" exclusively to convey their approval or disapproval of particular works of art, rather than to express any actual philosophy of what art is.
This gap in understanding is akin to the gap you describe between scientists and laypeople when it comes to their definitions of science, except that in my experience scientists' definition of science tends to be narrower than the layperson's, whereas the definition of "art" for someone with a formal art education is typically much broader than the layperson's.
I mostly think that insisting that something isn't art based on one's own personal taste is both pretentious and decidedly too common.
I must clarify that the phrasing of this post was to ask for words people avoided using for whatever reason they found relevant. It is unfortunate that that was lost in translation, but I attempted to follow suit in my own answer. I apologize if I failed to do so. In any case, it is important for me to express that the listing of the words I personally avoid using should not be understood as a "put down" or a prescription on how others must use the same words. It is my wish that you use the word "art" in whatever way you feel that you should.
I don't use the word "nearly" almost ever out loud. I used it as a small child and my family found it so amusing that they would repeat it in a high, nasally tone to mimic my little kid voice, and I don't think it was ever meant to be negative but it was so embarrassing that it killed the word for me.
Remarkable. One of those words that, like awesome and terrific, has lost most of its raison d'être.
To be clear, remarkable means "can be remarked on".
If someone asks for your remarks on a piece of media, and you say it was remarkable, you have failed. You established it as remarkable when you remarked on it, yet you added nothing with your remark.
Remarkable should be used at a vanishing percentage of its inverse, unremarkable; a wonderful word that carries the weight of describing the so-vapid-as-to-be-impossible-to-describe. Yet, remarkworthily; most of us seem unable to remove remarkable from our lingo.
I don't use Czech words "strašně" and "hrozně" in some context I will try to describe.
"Strašně Tě miluju" would translate to "I love you horrifically" while the meaning and common understanding is "I love you greatly".
"Hrozně se mi to líbí" would translate to "I like it horrifically" (the term horrificaly may not be the most precise but it will do) and the meaning and common understanding is "I like it very much".
As you see these words are commonly used here while they don't fit really well for the situation they are used in. I tend to not use them in these situations and use the right word that fit there "hodně (moc)" which would mean in these examples "very much" instead of "horrifically".
This sounds similar to "terrible" in English: "I'm terribly in love with you."
Yes, that's better word to describe it!
I don't like the words content and content creator, when used in reference to online media (YouTube, podcasts, and so on). Not necessarily because I don't think they're fitting in a lot of cases--actually I think they're entirely apt words to describe probably 90% (or more) of videos on YouTube, but I think that's the problem. Those words reflect the commoditization of "content" to the extend that most of it only exists to make money. Take AVGN, for example--in the beginning James Rolfe was making his Nerd videos because he saw himself as a up-and-coming filmmaker and was honing those skills while also sharing his passion for old video games, but if you watch him today you can tell the passion is mostly gone as he interjects his videos with ad reads for VPN services or whatever mobile game is shelling out the most marketing dollars that week. The move from art and passion to "content" and monetization just makes me depressed and it feels like using those words somehow encourages or justifies it as a good thing.
I don't really like the word slop anymore. I originally thought it was fine as a word to describe the output of generative AI used as a lazy way to avoid having to do any real work or pay real artists, but it's become way too overused now. People use it as a catch-all term to describe any media they don't like for any reason and it's already lost all meaning.
Same goes for enshittification. I liked it initially when there was some nuance to its meaning, but like "slop" it's morphing into a catch-all term used to describe any change made by any business that customers dislike for any reason. This one hasn't gotten as bad as slop, and I don't feel as bad when I use it myself occasionally, but I think it's on its way to becoming just as useless a term.
The word "sure".
I used to work in restaurants as a server in my twenties. One day a little girl (maybe ten years old) walked up to me and said, "I don't like the way you say 'sure'". She then turned around and walked away before I could ask why. So I started going to other higher end restaurants and observed how the other servers behaved, and started using phrases such as "of course" and "no problem" more. I am no longer in the restaurant field, and while I think the little girl's comment had less to do with the word "sure" and more to do with how I said it, I still to this day rarely use that word.
When I proposed to my wife, she said, “sure,” so I have a soft spot for it.
"Some type of way". I can't stand it, because it may be the most ambiguous phrase to describe how you're feeling that has ever been used in the history of human language.
I've heard people say that something made them feel "some type of way" when they mean something made them feel:
When someone says "wow that makes me feel some type of way", it's basically a throwaway sentence without context. It doesn't actually MEAN anything. It's basically just a meme people say to fill silence.
Your post gives me the feels. ;-)
>:^(
I don't know. I use it all the time, even when I know. It's a terrible habit. It can be an appropriate anwer, but it probably started because I need time to think about a question
Here is a vote from a fellow I don't knower, I need at least 5/10 minutes to make sure I understand the question as it is, and other 3 months for research.
It could mean "If I have to answer right now on the spot then I don't know. Perhaps I will know momentarily".
I started keeping a list of words I don't like. Here's a little sample:
I think more than the words themselves, I dislike the voice that they give a piece of writing. It feels unnatural and cumbersome.
I find that I will preface my writing with "I think" in contexts where it's already obvious that I am expressing my opinion.
I do want to find a balance in tone between too strident and too soft, but that particular way of soft pedaling needs to go.
Thankfully it has mostly fallen out of style, but for some reason I can't stand the word "meh". If you drop the "m" and use "eh" alone it doesn't bother me, so it's not the meaning that gets me. Something about the mouthfeel/sound I guess.
Perchance.
In all seriousness, though, while there are some words listed here that I mildly dislike, there are also several that others dislike that I specifically quite like, so that's interesting. I tend to like memorable words with unusual or highly specific meanings, regardless of how much they're perceived to be overused.
I think the words I dislike the most are contrived portuguese translations of words in english (or other languages) that should never have been translated in the first place. Often they don't feel like real words. It has become very difficult for me to read novels in portuguese because the translations are so abysmal these days; they aren't written in a way that conveys natural speech or narration. I don't want to be that guy, but when I was younger I'm pretty sure international novels weren't translated by extraterrestrials.
In fact, translations used to be good enough that middling books were better in portuguese. It's sad, because I assume this means the profession is no longer respected or well-paid.
"Hubby", "Noms", "Yummers", "Sexy Times", "Pupper" and many of the other cutesy baby talk words and phrases that were used all over the mainstream internet circa roughly 2010. Even though I'm an older millennial, it's really cathartic hearing all the zoomers talking about millennial internet slang being cringe, because I've absolutely hated it since it became popular.
No, you cannot haz cheeseburger.
"Preggers"
Another one
This is more of a rant and is kinda off-topic because this is not something I must actively avoid myself.
Very young Brazilians now use the word "fucking" in Portuguese. It is profoundly bizarre. They say things like "Eu entrei no fucking metrô" (I got in the fucking subway). It doesn't make any sense in Portuguese[1]. It's like someone is rubbing steel wool on my inner ear. You have no idea how bizarre that sounds to a Brazilian. It's like they're exterminating the language in an episode of Dexter and dumping its body in the Atlantic Ocean.
I love the English language and I am okay with imported words. But that one doesn't make any sense. It kinda shows that the user misunderstands both English and Portuguese. We have curse words here. Use them!
[1] We might say "Entrei na merda do metrô" or "Entrei naquele metrô de merda". The curse word is "merda" (shit). Notice the prepositions before it: "do" and "de". Also, the equivalent to the suffix "ing" as "continued action" would be the "gerúndio": "ando", "endo", etc. So if I am to interpret the phrase literally as if the "ing" had meaning, it would be "Entrei naquele fodendo metrô", which is a completely wrong and bizarre phrase in Brazilian Portuguese. I might say "Entrei naquele metrô fudido", which still sounds quite silly but is at least correct. Since the verb "foder" can be translated as "to fuck", "fodido" is a rough equivalent to "fucked".
I'll defer to your judgement on Portuguese, but why does it indicate that the user misunderstands English? At least in your example, "fucking" is being used pretty much exactly how it would be used in English and in a context where it would be acceptable to so so.
That is because they show a lack of understanding that "fucking" suggests a gerund, which does not make sense in Portuguese when employed this way.
"Fucking" in this context is a present participle, not a gerund, at least in the context of English grammar. idk if Portuguese distinguishes these -- other Germanic languages definitely do, but in English both are formed with -ing. Gerunds are used like nouns whereas participles are used like adjectives, adverbs, and in combined verb forms. "Fucking" would be a gerund in the sentence "Fucking your mom is all I do these days," but it's a participle in most contexts where people use it as a swearword/intensifier.
I really don't know if "gerund" in English means the same as "gerúndio" does in Brazilian Portuguese.
In any case, it is possible to adapt "fucking" in many ways for a similar effect. Actually adding "fucking" to a phrase in Portuguese does not achieve that goal as far as I am concerned. Perhaps they achieve the goal of showing conformity to how English works on a very literal level, but they do not show an understanding of how "fucking" actually works in English and how to convey the same sentiment. By merely repeating a pattern of the English language without making any adaptations, I do believe that they show a lack of understanding of how English works, and the effects "fucking" has in the English language. They are merely parroting the word.
That is of course just my own personal experience, but I never saw a Brazilian who is fluent in English using "fucking" in a phrase in Portuguese.
It is extremely alien.
I think I would need to see it used in context to really jusge whether they don't understand how English works. The syntax of your example seems perfectly acceptable according to English grammar (if not Portuguese), so it would depend on whether they use it for the same semantic content as the English "fucking." The English use of "fucking" is pretty broad semantically, so it's hard to tell if they're using it in different contexts from a native English speaker without many examples in a variety of contexts.
As a linguist, I take a descriptive point of view, so I don't really care whether they're using it "right" or not, but I think any potential differences and similarities to how it's used in English could be really interesting.
I have come from the future as I now remembered I hate the slang word "neurospicy" so much I'd rather be called a slur instead.
I don't like the word 'slop'. I never heard it until it popped up 2-3 years ago (english is obviously second language for me), and now it's everywhere. It feels like a rightwing-slur to me, since it's used to devalue a whole range of things. I think it's ugly.
That's interesting. I hadn't really thought it becoming more common recently but I suppose you're right, it has. Like the term "AI Slop" has gotten common. Even looking at google trends (not the best metric, I know) shows a jump in 2021 and another last summer.
I'm a native speaker and my first thought when I hear "slop" is a Bugs Bunny style cartoon pig rolling in slop.
I've definitely been hearing it more in the context of AI slop, and I kind of agree with its use there. I also kind of agree with @shu, because it is derogatory, and in this context is used intentionally that way.
When I hear or read the word though, my first thought is of a giant ladleful of slimy, oozing, semi-edible, unrecognizable foodstuff unceremoniously doled out on a plate in a cafeteria. Bonus points if the cafeteria worker is an emotionless drone doing nothing more than doling out slop and saying "next".
It was coined recently, specifically to refer to garbage generated by generative AI models. Like "spam" but for low-effort filler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop
However, it has already become overextended and lost any real meaning as people have misused it to cover non-AI things.
Slop is by no stretch a new word, I'm mostly familiar with the food scraps meaning, but there are a few more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slop. https://www.etymonline.com/word/slop
Obviously. (I even used it in the context of food scraps earlier in the thread.) The usage to refer to media is.
Aha, then I misunderstood.
No problem lol. I admit I'm disappointed in how short its life as a usable term to deride things like search engine spam was, since it's now basically "thing I don't like" to many people.
I’ve discovered that I almost religiously avoid using the word “that” in favour of “which” in places where it is grammatically acceptable to use the latter. So much so that it would actually be considered incorrect in an academic context!
Apparently, “that” should be used for essential descriptions, while “which” should be used for inessential descriptions. e.g. when discussing some result, one should say “the study that showed this was published in 2015” not “the study which showed this was published in 2015”. But I typically would write the latter.
On the other hand, when discussing a study, one could say “the study, which showed cats were cute, was published in 2015” but not “the study, that showed cats were cute, was published in 2015”. I think in this second example it would actually be grammatically incorrect to use “that”, rather than a style issue.
But I suppose I prefer to use “which” wherever possible since “that” is quite an overloaded word in terms of use. “Which” just reads better to me most of the time.
That which seems common must annoy you ;-)
I saw so many people on Reddit shoehorn "the latter" into their sentences over the years that I just can't stand to use it.
Not so much a word but a small phrase: just saying. It drives Mr. Tired up the wall, so I have completely removed it from my vocabulary, even though sometimes it is totally appropriate. But he gets absolutely irrationally angry at the phrase so I just don't use it to not poke the bear.
I try to cut out as much corporate lingo as I can unless it's for an audience who wants that type of thing. Words like "leverage", "synergies", "circle back", "put a pin in it" are super played out and I hate hearing them. One that really annoys me is "utilize." Per the definition there is some sense of "efficiency" versus just "use." But I prefer to say use or specify the efficiency.
I also don't like the word "jigger" (as in the measuring tool used in cocktail making.)
I really hate the redundant ones that have a more concise synonym that's widely used in regular language. "Utilize" is a good one. 99.99% of the time, people just use it to mean "use".
"Resource" instead of person or employee. "Touchpoint" instead of meeting. "
"Content" in certain contexts where it's possible to be much more precise without being more verbose. Seems deliberately reductive and vague. I guess it makes sense from e.g. Google's perspective that someone is a "content creator" since they literally don't have the capacity to mind what exactly the "content" is, and since it isn't relevant to their business model, but I see more people adopting this term to describe their own professions.
"Resource" on a similar note. At a workplace I heard that we were getting "two more resources for the team". It sounds like it's euphemistic, but I really don't know why they needed a euphemism for what they actually meant: people, workers, developers, members, whatever.
“Resources” to solely mean people always sounds strange to me, but we tend to use it as a catch all to collectively cover people, funding, and tools to do a project, etc. - which feels more natural.
Gamer. I used it like everyone else at some point when I was younger, but I somewhat hate it now. It's not necessarily because of GamerGate like for some others, because when that happened, I didn't speak English and had no idea about it (though the years of "capital G Gamer" jokes going around since then may have contributed to my distaste for it).
People who like books aren't called bookers. "Gamer" as a term always seemed like a childish response to the medium getting less respect than others in the past, maybe young people trying to give the hobby a sort of legitimacy by 'rallying' under the whole 'gamer nation' concept. Understandable but it has not helped; it paints the whole hobby as something childish even today.
Also, yapper. There was a short period where you'd see people get called that in an insulting, dismissive manner whenever they wrote a big post about something. What the hell? Is it wrong to have things to say now?
Is it only for these exact words or, for example, also gaming and yapping?
Any variation of it, yes.
Funnily enough I've seen the term yap and associated grammatical variants suddenly barge into the vocabulary of the online circles I'm in, namely vtuber fanbases, usually referring to the streamer's tendency to go off tangents while (or instead of) doing whatever else was planned, though since this tendency was already extremely widespread among vtubers (and I assume livestreamers in general) since before the term was adopted and the audience largely accepts or even outright considers it part of the appeal, the connotation is actually neutral to positive.