Words that should be banned
129 wordsSome words and phrases, or the use of certain words or phrases in certain contexts, really irritate me. Here is a growing list.
- Minnows
- … when used in the context of a football team. I’ve only shown an interest in football for 5 months or so, and I’ve already read or heard this patronising and unoriginal usage more times than I would like. I permit you to use the word in reference to real, not metaphorical, small fish.
- Provincial / The Provinces
- Only people from London use this, and they use it to mean “places other than London”, but it implies lack of sophistication and narrowness of perspective. Oh yes, because everyone in London spends their evenings nibbling tapenade from bruschetta and discussing Witgenstein.
- “With all due respect”
- … when no respect is intended.
May 20th, 2006 at 12:04
NO Way
popular expression in the 90s, a retort if you didn’t want to do something or disagreed slightly with a proposition. Now (thankfully) fallen into disuse.
Mate
everyone seems to call each other Mate these days, even the local Currys salesman calls me Mate when I,m just looking at their LCDs and Plasmas.
Any further comments mate?
August 9th, 2006 at 20:19
“The tea-room lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn’t been here twelve hours and already they loved me.”
Bill Bryson - Notes from a small island (1995), about his arrival in the UK in 1977.
I had similar experiences myself when I came to the UK in September 2000 and ROFLMAO when I read this passage a few months after that. Spot on!
After six years I still never use love/mate naturally…only in jest. I couldn’t become a Brit if I wanted to; I’d fail the citizenship application miserably!
August 17th, 2006 at 13:07
Just one word, often used in answer to a question: “Absolutely”.
Dear God, please ban it. Now!