Posted on 10/14/2026 5:07:27 PM PDT by DoodleBob
I love this. I hate that. Really? Is it necessary to exaggerate? If everything is huge or outrageous or unprecedented, then how will we express things that are truly out of the ordinary? Florid language is the enemy of clear, concise speech. Like putting exclamation points and emojis after every sentence, it pervades modern media and makes everyone sound like adolescent twits. I don't dislike the following expressions, nor do I hate them. I detest them with a burning rage that disrupts the very fabric of space and time.
- Amazing/Amazed: People say this when they really like something, but it seems to imply low expectations. Did you expect your $30 hamburger to suck? Did you expect the roller-coaster to be boring? Who do you think you are, James Bond? And finally, 'Amaze-Balls'? What does that even mean?
- Decimated: Used in journalism and elsewhere to mean drastically reduced. The literal meaning is to be reduced by 10%. Well that all depends don't it? If Jeff Bezos' finances were 'decimated', he would go from $140 billion to just $126 billion... Wow, decimated! How about this; "At the barber shop, my hair was decimated".
- Devastated: To be destroyed. I was devastated when Netflicks stopped streaming Buffy Vampire Slayer. Now you can only rent it on disk.
- Eviscerated/Gutted: Gutted, like a fish. Currently used to say that something has been rendered ineffective somehow. I think a term this disgusting and extreme should refer to extreme cases. For ordinary things it seems quite stupid; "my dinner plans were EVISCERATED", "The yard-debris pickup schedule was GUTTED". Oooooh!
(Excerpt) Read more at brookadams.com ...
Guilty as charged.
I was too fried last night to think clearly.
“This changes everything!”
“Debanked”
“Have a nice rest of your day”
“ Yes, I hate the trend of peppering speech with “like” every fifth or sixth word. It makes me cringe. “You know” is annoying as well”
I broke my daughter from using the “like” filler word. It was early high school for her. She would tell her mother and I a story full of “like”. I would look at her and say, ok tell us that again without using the word “like”.
It only took a few times for her to catch on how dumb she sounded. Smart girls don’t need a poor vocabulary.
“Bros”
Oligarch
It used to be that when people thanked you, they’d say, “I appreciate it”. Now the fad is, “I appreciate you”, and I cringe a little. I don’t know why, but it rubs me the wrong way in most situations.
“Racist” is overused and meaning is diluted.
“Nazi” is overused and meaning is diluted.
“Decimated” is used incorrectly.
“I could care less” is used incorrectly almost always. (Unless you actually COULD care a little less.)
“Me and ... “ is used incorrectly, even by highly educated people, e.g., “Me and Mom went to the store” instead of “Mom and I went to the store”. ARRRRGH!!
Awesome
“Perfect”
A good essay on the abuse of the English language: “Politics and the English Language” - George Orwell.
Yep, way overused. “Epic” is another of those words
“Me and ... “ is used incorrectly, even by highly educated people, e.g., “Me and Mom went to the store” instead of “Mom and I went to the store”. ARRRRGH!!
My pet peeve is when people use “I”, when they should use “me”, e.g., “God loves you and I”, instead of “God loves you and me”. I want to jump up and say, “Now take away the ‘you’ and the ‘and’, and see how ridiculous that sounds!”
I use it too lol.
“experts”
“peaceful”
“Disavow”
“show remorse”
“at the end of the day”
Forgot to add:
“Accountability” and “held accountable”
Just how will you do that? It means nothing.
“could care less “
“for sell?”
“yes, I want to sale it”
And of course,
“liberal, progressive, gay, etc.”
Not as annoying as ‘journey’...
YES! That, too.
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