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A nifty blog post at nifty website VirtualThesaurus on words people hate. Like “moist”. Which words do you hate?
Sometimes our perspective on language isn’t exactly rational: we love some words and absolutely despise other ones. What inspires such deep feelings, and why does word hate often seem to run hotter than word love? In the case of words like impactful, discussed in yesterday’s Red Pen Diaries, the bad vibes may arise because of an association with vacuous management-speak or other institutional jargon. But other times a word is disliked because it just sounds, well, icky. A look at some of the favorite and least favorite words selected by Visual Thesaurus subscribers offers some insight on verbal attractions and aversions.
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May 20th, 2009 at 9:27 am
“text” and “project” (n.)
May 20th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Any sort of ‘text speak’; u kno wht i’m tlkn abt.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
zeitgeist, cultural or otherwise.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
self-aggrandizement.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
LOL and staycation.
Also, I hate the overuse of “challenging” esp in corporate world b/c it is usually meant as a euphemism for difficult or hateful but nobody wants to offend their bosses or co-workers with “strong” language.
There must be many more examples of this.
E.g., “I found it challenging to work with her” should probably be, “I thought she was a narcissistic bitch,” etc
May 20th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
i always wanted a less forceful way to say “euphemism”
May 20th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Erudite. I feel that most of the people who use (and overuse) the word are doing so because they hope it actually makes them sound erudite.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:25 am
‘rustic’ when used in the context of food.
i conjure up images of rusty iron fences, arid sandy yards, abandoned wheel barrows and the smell of grandma’s cakes baking. but maybe that just has something to do with being Australian.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:22 am
“Like” used as a preface to a quote. In other words, I hate almost every sentence fragment I hear. It’s, like, “gimme a break”.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:27 am
“flavorful”
May 21st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I dislike “facilitate,” “implement” and “utilize.” All of these bureaucratic words could be banished forever from the English language and we wouldn’t miss them.