10 most annoying words and phrases 2023

[youngoldbloke]

'optics' instead of appearance.

 

[MichaelW2]

OK here's one that genuinely does annoy me. And has annoyed me for decades, let alone 2023. That is the substitution of "yourself" for "you". As in "we will send the goods to yourself".

I think it originates in a wish to appear polite and a fear that "you" is too blunt, so obviously it needs a fancy polite form. "Yourself" seems to fit the bill.

Reflexive pronouns always fox people for whom pronouns are of particular importance.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Reflexive pronouns always fox people for whom pronouns are of particular importance.

I wonder if it's due to English losing the distinction between singular and plural and formal and informal "you". (Like tu/vous in French) It seems that this has led to the reinvention of plural you, in "youse" and "y'all" and repurposing of "yourself" as formal.

If we'd kept thee and thou none of this would be necessary.

 

[FishFright]

It all went wrong with the language when the ice melted and original brits (illegal immigrants no doubt) moved in from the continent.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

at one point senior management insisted that the main call centre answered ALL calls within 3 rings
AND THEY DID IT!!

Then immediately hung up..

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Derrière. Pretentious? Moi? Surely not...

Arse

 

[Ming the Merciless]

''We are where we are.'' Always seems to be used to ignore how we got into the mess in the first place. It's a way of never sorting things.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA

 

[Juan Kog]

"Let's run this up the flagpole and see who salutes it!"

Never heard this before, but I really like it . 🤔 Must remember to work it into a conversation.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Me too, but there was an interesting programme on Radio 4 once pointing out that a lot of them were originally English. 'Gotten' is from Shakespeare.

We still have it in "forgotten." Get-got-gotten

 

[stephec]

''We are where we are.'' Always seems to be used to ignore how we got into the mess in the first place. It's a way of never sorting things.

Translation: I've dropped a bollock here and can't sort it out myself, so I'd like you lot to do it for me.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Translation: I've dropped a bollock here and can't sort it out myself, so I'd like you lot to do it for me.

Normally yes
it should be used when some pillock is taking up a lot fo time by saying
"well we should never have done x or y and if we had done it MY way then we wouldn;t be here - so we should have done z"
which may well be true - but we didn;t and we are now somewhere else so we need to start from here

which is when I have been known to use it

however, you always have to expect idiots to crop up

 

[Tail End Charlie]

Iconic, everything's iconic apparently.
Number one best seller. Every book is that too.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Iconic, everything's iconic apparently.
Number one best seller. Every book is that too.

Smashed it

basically anything that is an over exaggeration of a minor achievement

 

[mistyoptic]

Any sentence that starts with 'basically'

or "So..."

 

[mistyoptic]

While English might be a living language, some of us abhor mutants.
’Suffer not the mutant to live’.

John Wyndham, The Chrysalids?