It bugs me when people say “the thing is is that” (if you listen for it, you’ll start hearing it… or maybe that’s something that people only do in my area.) (“What the thing is is that…” is fine. But “the thing is is that…” bugs me.)
Also, “just because <blank> doesn’t mean <blank>.” That sentence structure invites one to take “just because <blank>” as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn’t want to do. Just doesn’t seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.
And I’m not saying there’s anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It’s just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.
Edit: I thought of another one. “As best as I can.” “The best I can” is fine, “as well as I can” is good, and “as best I can” is even fine. But “as best as” hurts.
I have zero gripes with my mother tongue borrowing English words for new concepts. It might be the best thing it can do, second only to dying.
But every one in ten words it borrows the wrong form. “*What’s that board? That’s a surfing. How do I call the one riding it? Why, a surfinger, of course. *” “My sister sent me another reels-- pluralize what, reelss? Of course it’s reelss, you weirdo.” Makes me wanna scrape my eyes and ears out.
“Also too” drives me up a wall.
“Didn’t used to”.
Just because thing, [that] doesn’t mean other thing.
You can’t even prove that it’s grammatically incorrect!
But it sounds awful. And I can’t even come up with an alternative.
“Correlation is not causation” is the phrase I use in that situation.
I really hate R’s in the middle of familiar.
It’s not feR-mill-yer.
A lot of people pronounce Chicago with an R.
…How? Where does the r go?
I’ve heard it pronounced “Cha car go”. I have no idea why some say it this way.
I still don’t end sentences with a preposition. Even aloud.
I still don’t know what a preposition even is. What are they even for?
Magnets. How do they even work?
Hahahahahaha I wish I knew… I just watched that Matt Damon great wall movie… they explain…
“Going forward” bothers me so much and I have no idea why. It wasn’t used when I was younger, but that’s true for lots of things.
Also “cringe” is pretty annoying.
”Going forward”
Because it’s a management phrase meant for discussions in directing a group that’s been co-opted by peers to make them sound more authoritative than their relative position actually is.
Had a co-worker say this to me the other day about something and I realized that I don’t like being spoken to as a subordinate by my peers.
Going forward is the worst of corporate-speak. I refuse to use this phrase.
#Reason being is
wtf is that
That actually ended up evolving over the last 75 or so years. Reason being is that I’m just playing, just wanted to use it.
Sometimes it really annoys me if a perfect spot for a proper “whom” is missed. Even worse though is a misplaced “whom”. Both instances are easy for me to spot because we decline pronouns quite a lot in German.
Edit: Sorry that’s not a construction, so much as just an error. For constructions one thing that gets on my nerves is if you try to tell someone about your previous state of mind to clear up a misunderstanding like “I thought the water had boiled already” and then they say “no” to tell you that your assumption was incorrect. This is annoying because first of all the information they are conveing is already known to you by the time of this discussion and secondly in the grammatical sense they are actually disagreeing with your state of mind, not the content. I always have the urge to say: “Yes, actually, I’m telling you that’s what I thought, you can’t disagree with me about what I was thinking.”
Its not even an error. The majority of english speakers wont use “whom” in that spot, so its not an error anymore.
Whatever
Myself, where a reflexive pronoun wouldn’t normally be used, typically near a conjunction where it is less obvious whether an objective or subjective pronoun is appropriate. eg “Jane and myself ate Bob’s donuts.” or “Bob brought donuts for Jane and myself.”
I hate the word “cleanse” because it means the same thing a “clean” but uses two extra letters. Fuck the word “cleanse.”
I’ve recently started hearing people say “It needs cleaned.” Meaning it needs cleaning or it needs to be cleaned, and it just shifts to the wrong gear.
I also hate the word “leverage” in the bullshit business lingo sense of the word. Just makes me think “Your business leverages solutions, and uses people.” Tell me, when did your brain die?
I think cleanse and clean are not quite interchangeable. Cleanse has a gravitas that clean lacks. For example, growing up, I heard a lot of things like “be cleansed of your sins”. “Be cleaned of your sins” makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
Hard agree on business lingo, though.
The only time I see “cleanse” used is either on women’s cosmetics or religious drivel as your example. So “cleanse” is 100% marketing bullshit.
“Cleansing” connotes inside and out. “Cleaning” is surface. Same as “impurity” vs. “dirt.”
See? Nothing but emotional bongwater.
I hate it when people call the product of a company the name of the company; like “let’s go get some Taco Bell” instead of “let’s go get some tacos from Taco Bell” or “Let’s go eat at Taco Bell”.
That’s a curious one, can you explain why it bothers you? Or is it just one of those things?
Couldn’t explain it, really; I just want to grab the person and explain that Taco Bell (or whatever) is not an object you can get some of, and Taco Bell doesn’t sell Taco Bells in any amount, they sell tacos! (In the voice you would speak to a toddler in, of course)
Homogeneous, meaning having a uniform composition. Hoe-moe-jee-nee-us (or hoe-muh- and/or -jee-nyus; point is, there’s an ee sound before the last syllable). Saying homogenous (huh-mah-jeh-nus) in that sense is not only wrong but also means something else.
Like Alan Turing?
Not gonna lie, I thought about your comment multiple times today trying to make sense of it, and only just now did I realize what you meant by it.
Yes, like Alan Turing. Ugh.
This might be due to the fact that I’m not a native speaker and I encountered this phrase at a later date, but people saying “it’s all but xyz” to mean “it’s xyz” really gets on my nerves. I get it, “it’s all but complete” means that virtually all the conditions are met for it to be complete, but I find it so annoying for some reason.
“The task is all but impossible” registers as ‘it’s not impossible, it’s everything else: possible’, so the fact that it means the opposite of that makes my brain twitch.
English intensifiers tend not to follow Boolean logic flows very well (think of double negatives). Instead, try to think of it as a little bit of extra data for your or the speaker’s benefit. “It’s all but impossible” does mean it’s possible, as you say, but there is more there. It means, “while this is possible, it’s so difficult or unlikely that we cannot count on normal levels of luck or effort to help us; you should reset your expectations accordingly.”
Your other example is similar. “It’s all but complete” tells you that the project or event is almost but notyet complete, but more than that. It means “This is very nearly complete. It is so close to complete, in fact, that the remaining time will be trivial. I suspect or know that you are eager for it to be complete, so unless doing so is all but impossible (😁), please try to be patient just a little bit longer.”
“All but” is a way to linguistically make a fine gradation in levels of “almost”.
I hate the confusion that “do you mind” questions cause.
“Do you mind if I turn off the light?”
What is meant in response: “No (I don’t mind)”
What’s said instead: “Yes”
I feel like two people never really know how the other will interpret it, so you almost always have to say something like “yes, go ahead” or “no, I don’t mind” (or “no, go ahead”). If they do respond just “yes” or “no”, I feel like I have to ask for clarification.
Also can we get the meaning of “semi-” and “bi-” figured out? I generally love the oddities of evolving language so long as we can all still be understood, but these two always require clarification.
Bi-annual: Every two years.
Semi-annual: Twice a yearMake it a law!
What are your thoughts on the word “biennial”?
I allow it only as it pertains to plants, anyone using it for an event deserves prison.
Just say “go ahead” or “please don’t.”
This is why we need to bring back yae and nay. We used to have two different yes and no words, one set was used in exactly this context. French still has it IIRC. I can’t remember which were which in English, I think yae and nay were for positive questions, and yes and no were for negative questions. Aha, quick Google shows that is right, neat.
