Overused terms/words

[Ryllharu]

In short, English is a messed up language, where rules don't apply at all (think of all the words with silent or non-silent letters spelled in similar manners), and American English is even more messed up, because most people care about proper language use even less. It's no wonder that English is one of the hardest languages to learn, we make things up as we go along.

"Synergy" - just a buzz word used in business and technology to make the speaker sound more intelligent.
"Go forward basis" - Of course the majority of actions where this is used will be done from now on, why else would you identify a problem and its solution!
"green [insert noun]" - A good portion of the time, the project or process isn't even remotely environmentally friendly. It is just slapped onto everything because of the whole Global Warming/Climate Change fanaticism the media and politicians are on lately. Call whatever you are doing, "green," and everyone is all onboard for it.

Those are the only three I can think up off the top of my head, I know there are a lot more that are slipping my mind.

[darkshadow]

I always say e-mails, because that is the correct plural form of the word in Dutch, I'm so used to it now that I don't really think about if its correct in English or not.

[samsonlonghair]

I'm tired of hearing the word "retro" applied to something that's less than ten years old.

"Synergy" - just a buzz word used in business and technology to make the speaker sound more intelligent.
"Go forward basis" - Of course the majority of actions where this is used will be done from now on, why else would you identify a problem and its solution!
"green [insert noun]" - A good portion of the time, the project or process isn't even remotely environmentally friendly. It is just slapped onto everything because of the whole Global Warming/Climate Change fanaticism the media and politicians are on lately. Call whatever you are doing, "green," and everyone is all onboard for it.

Corporate language like this really screams BS. Another one I hate is the phrase "thinking outside the box". How can you think originally if you're using this hackneyed expression?

[Animeniax]

"organic" is getting bandied about too much these days. Sadly, my parents are on the bandwagon and will choose any product that has the organic label on it versus something that doesn't.

[samsonlonghair]

You and I agree here too. Some brilliant advertiser found out that if he claimed that his products are "organic" and "all natural" consumers would believe they're healthy without any proof. Cobra venom is organic and all natural. That doesn't make it good for you. If I sold a big box of feces labeled "organic" and "all natural" some dope would buy it.

I'm sick of hearing that someone's doing something "24/7". I'm also tired of the redundant phrase "foreign imports".

[Munsu]

"organic" is getting bandied about too much these days. Sadly, my parents are on the bandwagon and will choose any product that has the organic label on it versus something that doesn't.

Along the same lines, "diet" and "sugar-free" simply because they taste like shit.

[samsonlonghair]

"gluten-free" and "no transfat" seem to be the diet words of the moment.

[rockmanj]

Also true with 'all natural'. Because A. (if you want to be reductionist) everything comes from our natural word (things are just altered chemically; I mean, you can make unnatural compounds, but they still come from somewhere) and B. If you know anything about the seedy belly of food production, its probably a li..

[The Heretic Azazel]

Bro.

I am NOT your fucking bro, your brother and damn sure not your bro-ham. It's bad enough when you get called that once, but two times in every sentence? It's like they can tell it gets on my nerves. Then they ask "what's wrong bro?"

The fact that you're still living, that's what.

[Kraco]

"gluten-free" and "no transfat" seem to be the diet words of the moment.

Gluten is an allergen to celiac disease carriers. The unlucky bastards just don't want their gut to bleed. I don't think you can blame them for that, even if you personally don't want to eat their more expensive and likely less tasty food. Complaining about gluten-free is like complaining about the "may contain traces of nuts or milk solids" (or something like that) you see very often. I have never heard of a healthy person pursuing gluten-free diet.

[poopdeville]

My roommate has some sort of celiac disease or gluten allergy. It really sucks. She used to really like beer, but now she can't have any. She drinks cider now. IKKI

[samsonlonghair]

I have never heard of a healthy person pursuing gluten-free diet.

Follow this link.

Marketers estimate that 15% to 25% of consumers want gluten-free foods — though doctors estimate just 1% have celiac disease

Now you have. It's the latest health craze. People who have never been diagnosed with any gluten problem are willing to pay extra for gluten-free food thinking it's healthier. Ironically, Gluten-free food is often higher in fat.

[Kraco]

Oh, well, you learn something new everyday. Even bad things. I guess I was being too biased; being lactose intolerant I will never understand people without any defects willingly restricting their diet for utterly artificial and stupid reasons.

[samsonlonghair]

I hear a lot of people where I live say "used ta could" for something they were previously able to do.

"I used ta could run ten miles, but I caint no more."

[Buffalobiian]

That's just grammatically wrong.

Which reminds me of how annoyed I get when people say:

"I didn't do nothing"

but they really mean:

"I didn't do anything"

[XanBcoo]

I hear a lot of people where I live say "used ta could" for something they were previously ale to do.

"I used ta could run ten miles, but I caint no more."

Why would you complain about a totally awesome sentence construction? See also:

"Might could"
"Fixin' to"
"Sit and done"

They're just so overly complicated and beyond comprehension to anyone not from the South, I can't help but love them.

Which reminds me of how annoyed I get when people say:

"I didn't do nothing"

but they really mean:

"I didn't do anything"

Every other romance language aside from English employs double negatives when negating a statement. The logic applied to it in English making it "incorrect" was something that was invented and enforced by bullshit language academies who decided it was logically incorrect. These same arbitrary rules also mean perfectly natural and comprehensible sentences are incorrect. I'm talking absolutely normal stuff like:

"Can you guess what I'm thinking of?"
"To boldy go where no man has gone before."

Clearly speaking "correctly" is a skill that everyone should learn, at the very least to appear more educated, but there is nothing inherently incorrect about these kinds of "mistakes". The fact that people use and understand them is proof of that. Even when I was about 6, the argument that double negatives actually meant a positive seemed completely convoluted.

[Animeniax]

I'm getting tired of hearing people say "google it" or "I wiki'd it".

People think doing a google search will answer all of their questions? No, it gives too many possible answers. It still requires knowledge and deduction about what you're looking for to filter out the 95% of bad results of your search to find the 5% of meaningful results.

Also, relying on wikipedia for information is asking for trouble, unless you verify that information with other sources. My sister had a problem with her paralegals citing wikipedia for trial research.

[shinta|hikari]

But the good thing about some wiki pages is that they have cited sources. You can simply verify the information there, or continue with those sources instead.

[Buffalobiian]

Every other romance language aside from English employs double negatives when negating a statement. The logic applied to it in English making it "incorrect" was something that was invented and enforced by bullshit language academies who decided it was logically incorrect. T

Really, I don't see anything with applying a bit of logic to language. To me, "Didn't do Nothing" very logically translates to "Did do Something".

Otherwise, how the heck are you meant to differenciate what someone's trying to say? Guess?

A: "Why did you stand there and do nothing?"
B: "I didn't do nothing!"

In the above example, if double negatives are the correct way to make a sentence negative, when what is B meant to say if B really wants to say he "didn't" do "nothing"? You mean his only correct option is to say "I DID do something", or "I did something"?

I think applying logic to language makes perfect sense, for language to make sense at all.

These same arbitrary rules also mean perfectly natural and comprehensible sentences are incorrect. I'm talking absolutely normal stuff like:

"Can you guess what I'm thinking of?"
"To boldy go where no man has gone before."

Clearly speaking "correctly" is a skill that everyone should learn, at the very least to appear more educated, but there is nothing inherently incorrect about these kinds of "mistakes". The fact that people use and understand them is proof of that. Even when I was about 6, the argument that double negatives actually meant a positive seemed completely convoluted.

Well, firstly, if they're a mistake, then they're inherently incorrect by definition. For sake of argument, I'll just call them a "variation".

Language has form, and if you deviate from that form, then it's inherently incorrect to that language since it doesn't follow the rules. (discounting poetry)

As far as I know, "to go" comes as a set, and the correct way to write it is "to go boldly". "To boldly go" is a split infinitive, and from what I was taught, is wrong.

Some guy probably made it up when he wanted to put more emphasis on boldly.

"Can you guess what I'm thinking of?" is similar, since "of" is tacked on by people who thought "Can you guess what I'm thinking?" didn't sound "right" to them.

"Try and achieve" is another slip commonly found around the place. People are really saying they'll "try to achieve". They'll try to achieve something, but they're not guaranteeing they'll achieve anything. "Try AND achieve" means otherwise.

"And" was just shoved in there because it was either convenient, or people forgot what to put.

"Making sense" don't make it right. My brother's got some language problems, and he says "Do you know what is it?" rather than "Do you know what it is?"

I understand him, but it doesn't make him right.

But the good thing about some wiki pages is that they have cited sources. You can simply verify the information there, or continue with those sources instead.

That's what I do for some of my assignments. I wiki a topic, and out comes a load of info. I read it, get an idea of what the whole field is about, go to the cited sources, and read them for a deeper (and sometimes corrected) understanding.

[XanBcoo]

People think doing a google search will answer all of their questions? No, it gives too many possible answers. It still requires knowledge and deduction about what you're looking for to filter out the 95% of bad results of your search to find the 5% of meaningful results.

Sounds like "SEARCH OVERLOAD" to me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMt6...eature=channel