I found this list and we love lists on Petticoats and Pistols so, even though it’s not specifically cowboys I decided to use it today.
The list is from Oxford, which begs the question, don’t they have something better to do at Oxford?
And they appear in a book, which begs the question, how’d they get a BOOK out of this little bit of info. But I’ve read many non-fiction books that honestly should have been a pamphlet.
A good example of that–have you ever read The Rules? It’s a book of Rules for 
girls in relationships. It’s gotten a lot of ridicule and it also sold about umpteen-million copies. The truth is, there’s a pamphlet’s worth of good stuff in The Rules.
But you know publishers, ‘we want X number thousand words’ so an author is forced to take her pamphlet and pad the thing to up the word count. I suspect this may be the case in the irritating phrases book Damp Squid—named after the mistake of confusing a squid with a squib, a type of firework. And I’ll add here that I don’t mean the phrases book Damp Squid is irritating, I mean Damp Squid is a book about irritating phrases.
And ho-hum who cares about squid and squib. Not me, so the title is a little irritating in and of itself.
The book’s author Jeremy Butterfield says that many annoyingly over-used expressions actually began as office lingo, such as 24/7 and “synergy”.
Other phrases to irritate people are “literally” and “ironically”, when they are used out of context.
Mr Butterfield said: “We grow tired of anything that is repeated too often – an anecdote, a joke, a mannerism – and the same seems to happen with some language.”
The top ten most irritating phrases:
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It’s a nightmare
8 - Shouldn’t of
9 - 24/7
10 - It’s not rocket science
‘At the end of the day’ popped into my head when I read the title of the article. I’ll add a few of my own.
Awesome.
The overuse of the word awesome is so, so irritating.
I could care less.
This means what exactly?
And I’ll add one here my husband says all the time.
Don’t know. Don’t care.
You know, this is very rude. He thinks it’s funny when he doesn’t want to listen to me yammer on about whatever vital bit of free association words are currently being shared with him.
Let’s share.
That’s also annoying. Someone coming up to you and saying, “I want to share something with you.” Don’t know why that bugs me, but it does.
And it always bothers me when someone, talking about holding a meeting says, “We need to sit down and (whatever)
I always think, no, let’s have the meeting standing or laying flat on the floor. How how about we meet at the swimming pool…MORON. Still, I have a hostile streak so that could just be me!
How about you? Do you have words or phrases that irritate you?
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