I never would have guessed I was creating a smash hit when I wrote Words That Piss Me Off in March 2010.
Most of the phrases that sparked my rant were irritating proliferations of business English into daily use.
Those trendy terms faded into obscurity like the 1970s pant-and-shirt combos that seemed cutting-edge on school photo day but were used against you by your mother when your first girlfriend came over for dinner.
We can only hope the purveyors of today’s linguistic butchery will eventually be humiliated in a similar fashion.
But I don’t want to wait that long, and I bet you don’t either.
That’s why I’ve dropped the gloves one more time, sixteen years later, to have a bash at the latest assault on the language I love.
Am I the only one who thought he was hearing-impaired when someone said, “That’s a big ask”?
I looked around but I just couldn’t see it. I was the only other person in the room, and I barely have an ass. Since when did the verb “to ask” become a noun?
Verbing the noun is all the rage these days. When I was in school, ‘gifted’ referred to the smart nerdy kid who got extra math classes as punishment for winning the genetic lottery. Now it means giving someone something, as in, “Which book have you gifted the most?”
‘Gifted’ is today’s ‘utilize’. Just say “gave”.
Moving on…
“I want to double click on that” always leaves me confused and intimidated. With castanets? With a condemning tsk of the tongue? Or does it mean they want to bite it twice with their incisors?
And can we go back to reserving “let that sink in” for the culmination of a really hot date? [Voice from another room: “Too graphic!”]
Let’s discuss ‘remuneration’ while we’re at it. Why struggle to pronounce that awkward mouthful in an attempt to seem sophisticated when you could just say “paid” or “salary” instead?
When someone says something is “x-coded”, what sort of code are they using? Will I need to steal an Enigma machine to crack it? We can be sure it isn’t a book code. The types who use such terms aren’t exactly readers.
I can’t make fun of “based” because I haven’t got a clue what it means. I always thought it was the opposite of acidic.
While we’re at it, can we please dispense with the following:
- Saying something “lives rent-free”. Just like you still do with your parents?
- Describing groups of people as ‘folks’. Are we all trapped in an old country song? Well, are we, pilgrim?
- “You good?” Not if I can help it. In my generation, being ‘good’ was really uncool.
- The term ‘Influencer’. This is closely akin to ‘YouTuber”, someone whose vapid profession is to play video games while other even more vapid people watch them.
- And don’t get me started on everyone’s favourite truism disguised as a Zen koan: “It is what it is.” Well, it’s not what it isn’t, unless you’re in Schrödinger’s Box. Want me to settle this by opening the lid?
I won’t even begin to ‘unpack’ these empty phrases, not just because they’re empty, but because I hate that phrase, too.
Can’t we just go back to explaining things? I’m getting confused about which is a sentence and which is my suitcase. I’ll be packing sentences and writing my luggage before much longer, and that could really ruin a trip.
To be fair, this phrase can also be used aggressively when the speaker wants to imply that your views are morally inferior to theirs. “Let me unpack that for you.” I hoped you would. It’s your baggage.
So much of the current discourse is a minefield of grievance-laden words and phrases weaponized to position the other person as morally inferior if they dare to disagree. Even wanting to discuss the speaker’s claim is terribly ‘problematic’.
To be fair, “That’s problematic” at least sounds more sophisticated than shouting “I don’t like it!” while stamping your feet like a toddler. It also positions the subject as flawed, something that the more accurate cry of “I’m offended!” wouldn’t do.
The latter is your problem — no one gives a shit if you’re offended — but you can bully them into pretending to care by implying they’re morally tainted.
Moving on.
‘Racialized’. What the hell does that even mean? Aren’t we all lumped into some sort of race? And who ‘ized’ us? What were we before we became ‘racial-ized’? Just hollow outlines, like characters in a colouring book waiting for some uncoordinated kid to grab a Crayola and -ize us?
Could we please forget about arbitrary skin tones again and just go back to judging individuals based on how they treat others?
And while we’re at it, let’s stop claiming everything is ‘systemic’ (or is it cis-temic? I can never remember). The notion that your life sucks because insurmountable unseen forces are acting against you in an organized manner used to be called a conspiracy theory.
Another incredibly irritating phrase gets applied to everything from a writer’s subject matter, an individual’s self-image, and the reason for exempting oneself from standards everyone else has to abide by. It goes like this: I exist “at the intersection of X and Y”. I punched that shit into Google Maps and I’m sorry to tell you, you’re completely lost. Try looking in the vicinity of Resentment and Envy.
“What, you’re near-sighted, Moldovan AND a non-binary semi-straight shoe fetishist? Society must reward you for your incredible uniqueness. Anyone who remains unmoved is obviously committing a hate crime!”
‘Intersectionality’ is just the idea that it’s somehow exceptional not to have a one-dimensional life.
These days, ’privilege’ is something someone else has that the speaker envies (closely related to terms like ‘equity’ and ‘tax the rich’).
Other semi-related words that piss me off are attempts to hide the ugliness of reality behind supposedly compassionate euphemisms, like referring to homeless people as “the unhoused”. I’m sure they appreciate the delicate distinction.
We had a similar phenomenon in the 1980’s called ‘political correctness’. Short people were ‘vertically challenged’ and fat people were ‘horizontally challenged’. Back in my parents’ day they were ‘heavy set’ or ‘big boned’. Today they’re ‘people of girth’.
None of those terms change reality, of course. But demonstrative compassion does help the speaker feel morally superior to everyone else.
I could say more about the butchery of language under the guise of ‘social justice’, but why bother? Anyone who read Orwell knows terms like ‘Ministry of Truth’ always mean their opposite.
Moving on…
The next word that pisses me off isn’t a word at all. It’s the exclamation point.
Why is everyone so excited all the time? Why are they always shouting? Is this the textual equivalent of being bubbly? The exclamation point is overused by the same grown adults who sprinkle emojis unironically throughout their emails.
Speaking of being bubbly, is it even physically possible to ‘exceed your best’? I guess it must be in a world where everyone is ‘more than excited‘. The only thing these people never seem to get very excited about is improving their vocabulary.
And finally…
Anytime I hear someone order an “expresso” I think they’re asking for a faster train in a bad Italian accent: “I don-a wanna take-a da local. I wanna the Milano express-o.”
But who am I to complain about today’s abuse of the language? I’m just a cynical Gen X throwback, raised at a time when everyone had thicker skins and we could laugh at ourselves and each other.
Guys like me don’t do micro-aggressions. Give me a good old fashioned macro-aggression every time.
Anyone want a knuckle sandwich?
