OT: What words or phrases annoy you?

[Tekkie©]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 08:46:33 +0100, Andy Bennet posted for all of us to digest...

In the final analysis.

[Tekkie©]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 10:13:48 -0400, Ed Pawlowski posted for all of us to digest...

Profit & mark up.

[Tekkie©]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 06:37:13 -0700 (PDT), [e-mail] posted for all of us to digest...

The juxtaposition of bring and take in usage.

Bring that cretin to the station.

Take that cretin to the station.

[Snit]

On Jun 11, 2021 at 4:08:16 AM MST, "Buck Fiden" wrote [e-mail]:

Why focus on the left when Fox is the least reliable... but also the most trusted (conservatives seek out unreliable sources to trust).

[charles]

It's not the disabled who wantb other terms. It's those who "feel" for them.

[FromTheRafters]

on 6/10/2021, micky supposed :

Yes, different from is 'more better' than ( <===another pet peeve, than/that ) the other one. Maybe 'more better' is similar to what Rod was thinking about - 'more' modifier is completely unneeded superflouos and pretty ( <=== another one ) redundant even though better is not actually a superlative.

[Kelly Phillips]

loose versus lose

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yes, the world is a better place since we no longer have retarded or crippled people.

[Wade Garrett]

The difference being.......?

[Wade Garrett]

Back in the day, Moron, Imbecile and Idiot had specific IQ ranges to be classified as such...

[gfretwell]

How about the misuse of evacuate?

"100 people were evacuated"

I bet that was messy

Definition of evacuate

transitive verb

1 : to remove the contents of : empty 2 : to discharge from the body as waste : void 3 : to remove something (such as gas or water) from especially by pumping 4a : to remove especially from a military zone or dangerous area b : to withdraw from military occupation of

You can evacuate a building but you can't evacuate people unless you pump their stomach or give them an enema.

[Jim Joyce]

For me, you can stop there. :-)

[Ed Pawlowski]

Simple. Price of this drill is $19.95

We make drills for different price points. The $20 range, the $50 range, the $100 range to reach different markets.

The $20 price point could be $15 to $25 depending on model.

[Ed Pawlowski]

And I worked with all of them over the years.

[micky]

I don't like it when people say, My name is Dr. John Smith.

There are tv commercials for medical devices and procedures and interviews were people say things like this.

They should say, My name is John Smith, or if they want, "I am Dr. John Smith."

Dr. is a title and it's not part of their name. Same with all the other titles, military, political, diplomatic, clerical, scholastic, royal, semi-military like police and fire, etc.

[micky]

Also, using "obviously" for things that are not obvious.

What they usually mean is "not surprisingly".

Just this past week I heard someone say on the news, "This was obviously the hardest decision of my life". We don't know what other decisions he's had to make, or how hard that one was. There are other examples that are even worse.

[micky]

Disabled has a meaning, but it's not the one they think it is and it's not the one they usually want. When you disable the starter motor, or the AC, or anything, it doesn't work anymore. All of the "advocates for the disabled" try to make the point that most of them are useful. They can overcome their problems, either with technical help or just by taking more time, etc. They are still able to do things. They are not disabled. Sometimes they even call them "differntly abled", a terrible construction but it still makes the point that they are not disabled.

The word they wanted they already had, handicapped. Handicapped means you can do it but it takes longer or maybe you don't do it quite as well. So golfers are given a handicap, but it's really an anti-handicap to be able to compare their scores on a given day with par.

IIUC jockey's who don't weigh as much as the other jockey's get weights put on their horse to make the race fair, unrelated to the weight of the jockey. The weight is a handicap, but the horse still finishes the race.

All this started by a misunderstanding, thinking that handicap was related to some kind of begging with a cap in one's hand, but that would be capihand. The origin of handicap is different. It's an entirely different word.

Strangely, afaict they still have handicap parking. I guess the disabled are not allowed to park there, but then again, if they're disabled, they can't drive anyhow.

[micky]

Of course retarded was a gentle word when it was first used. It meant that it took them longer to do something, as in the first meaning of the word retard at dictionary.com, "to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede." But as with handicapped, it implied that they would finish, just later than others. Unfortunately, maybe, this choice of words didn't fool onlookers when it came to those who were so retarded that they never learned certain things. Plus there are the nasty people who used it as insult. So the word fell out of favor.

It reminds me of some of the words for prison. Reformatory, a place where the person will be reformed. Penitentiary, a place where he will do penitence (and maybe penance). Correctional Institute, a place where he will be corrected. The similarity with retarded is that people forget the original meaning of the word, and it just sounds like another word for prison.

I think I agree that cripple is usually obsolete now because for so many people there are prostheses and motorized things, so that most are not as crippled as they once would have been, maybe not at all. But otoh, when someone can't do something, saying he's crippled shouldn't be offensive. Changing the words used doesn't make his health any better.

Have you ever seen the original version of The Best years of our Lives, where the soldier who has lost both his forearms and hands returns home from the war. Played by a man who was in just that situation.

I sort of knew that, but I wonder what they do now. Just use IQ numbers?

I've met many of your co-workers at one bar or another.

[micky]

"This point in time". That's what Herdelman and Erdelman used to say.

[Andy Burns]

So a point is a range, glad that's cleared up.