OT: What words or phrases annoy you?

[Kelly Phillips]

loose versus lose

[Ed Pawlowski]

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

[T i m]

<snip>

But it is right in it's first form.

Expanded it means 'It would *still* be cheap, even if it were twice the price it is now'.

But as a phrase they have the same meaning.

You can / could 'care less' about something than you otherwise might.

<snip>

Cheers, T i m

[Wade Garrett]

The difference being.......?

[Wade Garrett]

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

[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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Do they still exist?

[The Natural Philosopher]

What took you so long?

[Spike]

I was waiting for T i m to condemn himself out of his own mouth, which he's now done!

[tim...]

In much the same way that Reliant Robins still exist

[NY]

I didn't know about the name to IQ mapping.

Yes, they usually get promoted very quickly to management roles.

[NY]

"This was obviously the hardest decision of my life" may be hyperbole, but it could be taken at face value: the speaker knows what decisions he's had to make up to now in his life, and judges the one he's talking about to be the hardest of those (without enumerating all the decisions). Obviously no-one can compare it with decisions in the future which they have not yet faced, but I'd take "of my life" to mean "of my life *so far*".

[NY]

I've not heard that term. The usual euphemism is "learning difficulties" which tends to refer to people who are unkindly and humorously referred to as "the hard of thinking" as an extension of the similar derivation "the hard of hearing".