Another phrase I hate

April 9, 2013 • 5:32 am

I’ve heard this one, which seems to be increasingly common, twice in two days. It’s odious:

“lived experience”

This phrase is often used to describe the lives of oppressed people or members of minorities, as “We need to pay attention to the lived experiences of ________.”  Now I’m a left-winger and all, but I’m also a grammatical conservative, and, for crying out loud, what is wrong with the simple word “experience”?  Is there such a thing as an unlived experience?

We’ve already had a thread on words and phrases that readers find offensive, but feel free to contribute others below.

207 thoughts on “Another phrase I hate”

  1. Maybe if we are talking about zombies (Republicans for you?) we could talk about their ‘lived experience’ as opposed to their ‘dead experience’?

  2. It’s like the use of “lifestyle” for life. It’s just adding more syllables to make things sound more impressive.

    1. Notice ‘lifestyle’ is always used by marketroids to mean upmarket. Which is quite illogical, a slum-dweller in Nigeria has a lifestyle, albeit a crappy one.

      Similar to ‘quality’ – which can be atrocious just as easily as good.

      1. It is also used by religious conservatives to marginalize gay people, suggesting that their sexual orientation is just a choice.

      1. There are people who feel that if they’ve read a book or seen a documentary on a topic that they’ve somehow experienced it. It comes down to the difference between theory and application, and is one of the reasons, I suspect, that the US Constitution established minimum ages for federal elective office – so that one’s real world experiences had a chance to temper the naivete of a life spent only in booklearning.

        When I took basic biology in college, the lecture professor told us that all the lectures in the world wouldn’t turn a student into a biologist – that a degree without fieldwork was meaningless.

        This is why organizations like the Taliban (it’s the Pashto word for “students”) are dangerous – they’ve spent their entire lives absorbing idealism instead of dealing with reality. The same can be said of anyone who spends a majority of their time with their nose buried in scripture of any kind.

        The phase doesn’t yet rankle me much as this is the first time I’ve encountered it, but I imagine that if I begin hearing it on a daily basis it will become annoying. Based on Ant’s comment, though, I think there is a need to distinguish between actual and vicarious experience; it’s just a matter of finding the appropriate words to do so.

        1. One phrase that easily becomes rankling when it’s heard every day is “on a daily basis.” 😉

          3. I personally prefer “365 times per revolution of the planet earth around its star based on years marked on the Gregorian calendar — except on years that are divisible by 4 and don’t end in double zeros unless also divisible by 400; in which case, 366 times.”

        2. The same can be said of anyone who spends a majority of their time with their nose buried in scripture of any kind.

          I would add any dogmatic belief system that makes truth claims about the universe (or society) yet fails to provide a full, good-faith analysis, including nuance, of the subject being discussed. And this is not a bash at conservatives as liberals and moderates also have their sacred cows of utter bullshit to which they hold tenaciously.

          1. Except for us fortunate bullshitless personages who are blessed with names beginning with the letter M.

        3. On my first day as a court reporter (and parttime student), the wizened old journo mentoring me thrust a note at me that said

          “University is the world of the school. Journalism is the school of the world.”
          – Oscar Alpers

          Alpers was a wise old judge who’d been a journalist. Spoke only Danish till he was 12.

          1. Perfect glottal stop commend correlates highly with wisdom according to all with a native command of Dansk, jeg forstor.

    2. Opposite – yes – in that context it makes some sense. I suppose it might also be in contrast with some of these on line fantasy worlds some people seem to appreciate…

    1. I don’t object to that. It implies “We know you want to….”

      But a case could be made against any notices being polite (I’ve seen some headed “Polite Notice”). You’re notices, dammit, you don’t have to care about our feelings. Just tell us what you want us to do or not do!

      My favourite for years has been

      “PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT AS A REFUSAL OFTEN OFFENDS”

      It says everything except what it means, that they don’t give credit. It rather presumptuously and disingenuously implies that other, thin-skinned people (the comma is important) might take offence (but we know you wouldn’t, but we’re just going to warn you not to even ask, so that we don’t have to risk you being one of those nigglers).

      “NO CREDIT” would serve exactly the same purpose and not risk giving any offence at all.

  5. It’s a fuzzy locution but a fair one. “Lived experience” is meant to stand in contrast to “vicarious experience” as one that’s more immediate and personally influential.

    2. One of the uses of the phrase “lived experience” that really irks me is when it replaces “anecdote”. I’ve seen it used to argue that a person’s “lived experience” somehow trumps data and scientific studies.

    3. Is it reasonable to say that a “vicarious experience” is nothing more than an “observation,” or at most a “close” observation? (For example, a child might not get hit by a parent, but might observe the parent hit the other parent. Though it seems that that “observance” qualifies as an “experience.” Though, of course, the child might easily enough be threatened with being hit by the parent, in which case that would readily enough qualify as an “experience.”)

      I’ve heard “life experience” used. Is there a dime’s worth of difference between “lived” and “life”?

      I guess I’ve mentioned it before; there’s a “meme” being spread, as in “people that” versus (what I insist is the proper) “people who.” I subjectively perceive it to be part of the objectifying, dehumanizing of flesh-and-blood human beings (re: human “resources” and “capital.”)

      (I once talked to an LDS lady who took offense at the “Our Father, WHICH art in Heaven.” She was adamant that it could only be “WHO” art in Heaven. However, seems like the “correct” version uses “which.”)

      1. The idea that “who” is for people and “that” is for things is an established convention of grammar, that’s right. But, although some usage experts continue to recommend against it, “that” has been in use as a pronoun with a human antecedent for a long time, as R.W. Burchfield points out in his lengthy discussion in THE NEW FOWLER’S MODERN ENGLISH USAGE (1996). The OED cites Chaucer, Langland, and Wyclif using it this way, and it includes citations from writers in every century since then. So there’s clearly room for exception, and some constructions really seem to work better with “that.”

      2. “I’ve heard “life experience” used. Is there a dime’s worth of difference between “lived” and “life”?”

        I’m pretty sure “life experience” contrasts with work experience and educational experience and is something you want to put on a resume but doesn’t have a place on a standard template.

  7. There’re *so* many of these things I dislike but the one that comes to mind is the phrase “Same difference”.

    1. I’ll defend that one as a slangy short form for: “I acknowledge the distinction you have pointed out, but deny that it makes any difference to the situation under discussion”. (Granted, we already have the non-slangy phrase “Distinction without a difference” for the same concept).

  8. I looked up to see if George Carlin used it in “Count the Superfluous Redundant Pleonastic Tautologies”, but he didn’t. Carlin has “past experience” though. Equally dumb.

    1. As Tony Randall once reminded us, a pleonasm is not a neoplasm. That would be a spoonerism.

  9. I hate “octopi” as the plural of octopus. In English, the plural is quite correctly rendered as octopuses. Some people make it like fish or deer and thus don’t have a differentiated plural form. If you want to go all Hellenic, you can say “octopodes”. But please not “octopi”!
    Explanation: The word is formed from two Greek roots, octo (eight) + pous – shortened to pus (foot). The latter evolved from Proto-Greek pods, and also occurs in in tripod, cephalopod, arthropod, etc. The plural of Greek pous is podes.
    But, there is nothing wrong with using a standard English sort of plural for a word that has been completely adopted in the English language, so I argue for octopuses.

        1. Yes!

          late Middle English: via French or late Latin from Greek antipodes ‘having the feet opposite,’ from anti ‘against, opposite’ + pous, pod- ‘foot.’ The term originally denoted the inhabitants of opposite sides of the earth, or of the side opposite to oneself, and was later transferred to the places where they live (mid 16th cent).
          — NOAD

          /@

          1. Here in New Zealand it’s a common word, and we were once referred to as living in “the Antipodes” and being “Antipodean” by people in England. There are some islands south of here called the Antipodes Islands because they’re roughly opposite the British Isles.

            Oddly, most of the world’s land does not have land as its antipodes, only
            *most of New Zealand and parts of Spain,
            *parts of South America and parts of South East Asia,
            *Eastern Polynesia and tiny bits of Africa, and
            * Greenland, Arctic Canada and part of Siberia with Antarctica.
            The whole of Australia is neatly antipodean to the middle of the Atlantic. (I have the world map on T-shirts, linked to my name.)

          2. “Oddly, most of the world’s land does not have land as its antipodes”

            I’ve seen those maps before. I’m still wondering if it’s a coincidence or not. Because the Earth’s surface is about 3/4 water, on average over geologic time, 1/4 of the land should have an antipode over land. Right now it looks like substantially less than that, I wonder if there could be for example a tidal effect that accelerates tectonic movement when two continents align on opposite sides of the earth.

      2. You mean
        ok-TOP-o-deez?
        I’d have said
        ok-to-PO-deez
        and given myself credit for not saying
        ok-to-poads.

        I assume you mean you say
        an-TIP-o-deez
        not
        AN-ti-PO-deez

        Strictly speaking that’s not a rhyme.

        1. Yep. |äkˈtäpədēz| & |anˈtipədēz|

          I’m all for strictness, so why isn’t that strictly a “correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words”? Is it something to do with the stressed syllables?

          /@

      3. Discussion of the word “antipodes” reminded me of the Ogden Nash poem, “The Wombat”:

        The wombat lives across the seas,
        Among the far Antipodes.
        He may exist on nuts and berries,
        Or then again, on missionaries;
        His distant habitat precludes
        Conclusive knowledge of his moods,
        But I would not engage the wombat
        In any form of mortal combat.

        1. Lovely. Does your nym translate to “wombat”, or is that just a coincidence.

    2. I entirely agree with you. Another word that has completely entered the English language is pizza, whose plural is pizzas and not the Italian pizze.

      1. Even worse: panini as singular with a plural of paninis. At least Italian restaurants like ASK get it right. But in most places, ask for a panino and they look at you like a fool.

        /@

        3. Ok, so while we are at it, let’s consider the words pundit and guru. They were imported into English most likely from Sanskrit (or perhaps from Hindi). Assuming it was Sanskrit, here is a handy guide to pluralization of these terms that all the learned pedants on this thread are expected to follow from now on. Bear in mind that Sanskrit has about seven different noun cases, and three different numbers, so the “plural” depends upon the grammatical case in which the pundit (or guru) is being referred to. So here is the table for pundit (from http://sanskrit.inria.fr/cgi-bin/SKT/sktdeclin?lex=SH&q=pandit&t=VH&g=Mas&font=roma). The three entries in each row refer to singular, double and plural numbers
          respectively.

          Nominative pandit panditau panditaḥ

          Vocative pandit panditau panditaḥ

          Accusative panditam panditau panditaḥ

          Instrumental panditā pandidbhyām pandidbhiḥ

          Dative pandite pandidbhyām pandidbhyaḥ

          Ablative panditaḥ pandidbhyām pandidbhyaḥ

          Genitive panditaḥ panditoḥ panditām

          Locative panditi panditoḥ panditsu

          I am looking forward to more informed and nuanced usage of the various forms of “pundit” from now on, just as I am looking forward to people talking in terms of “panino”
          and “graffito”.

          Tl;dr: There is a sound reason why we do not attempt to follow the grammatical rules of the original language for loan-words.

          2. Reading that table out loud sounds like a Sheila Chandra CD! (Not surprisingly.)

            That’s a fair point, but we could at least have had panino and paninos.

            /@

          4. I didn’t advocate the use of graffito as the correct singular of graffiti. I have seldom found it useful to know that unless I’m in a trivia challenge. However, there is this: “There is a sound reason why we do not attempt…”

            There is no reason to use the word “why” after the word “reason” when the latter word is used as a noun. When “reason” is used as a verb, the “why” is sometimes applicable. Otherwise it is only useful when quoting Tennyson.

            The rules for loan words vary. Sometimes their native grammar gets imported with them. Sometimes they assimilate into the adoptive language’s patterns. Neither process is uniform or predictable. Most people don’t have a problem with “stadiums”, forget that “datum” is the singular of “data” but find “radiuses” far too atrocious and stick with “radii”.

            It should not be necessary to repeat James Nicholl’s famous quote here.

          5. “There is no reason to use the word “why” after the word “reason” when the latter word is used as a noun. When “reason” is used as a verb, the “why” is sometimes applicable. Otherwise it is only useful when quoting Tennyson.”

            Ah, good old personal grammatical rule invention. Just try reading that sentence that is bothering you with the “why” removed and you will see the reason why (see what I did there?) I put it there.

          6. I did. It is a better sentence without the “why” and I do not see the reason you put it there (See? I can do it too). It’s a personal peeve not a personal rule. It’s also redundant and never necessary.

            When I taught writing in college, the first assignment for my class was to read Politics and the English Language, followed by Lewis Thomas’ Notes On Punctuation. I also handed out a list of my pet peeves with instructions that nothing on that list was to appear on any written assignments handed in. I have a feeling that you would have transferred into another section.

          7. “It’s also redundant and never necessary.”

            Wrong. Redundancy, as in this case, can often be used for emphasis (c.f. your last sentence in the same paragraph). Also, it might sound a “better sentence” to you, but it certainly does not to me.

            “When I taught writing in college, the first assignment for my class was to read Politics and the English Language, followed by Lewis Thomas’ Notes On Punctuation. I also handed out a list of my pet peeves with instructions that nothing on that list was to appear on any written assignments handed in. I have a feeling that you would have transferred into another section.”

            I would have. If I took a college writing class, I would expect to practice the art of effective communication, not the art of adhering to the “pet peeves” of the instructor or George Orwell :).

            On the subject of “Politics and the English Language”, you might like to have a look at this piece by a professional linguist.

          8. My criticism of “reason why” is an opinion, not a point of scholarship (as are most of the quibbles on this thread). Pulliam is a respectable linguist – one of the ones who actually managed to make a name for himself, unlike those who, like me, couldn’t find enough openings in the field to go beyond the MA level – but his article on Orwell’s essay is not scholarship, it is opinion and only that. Your dogged insistence on the use of two words where one will do is also that, and possibly just a manifestation of childlike delight in being contrary. Continuing this wrangling is about as profitable as debating the relative merits of two different cults…er…denominations of Christianity.

            Maybe my list of pet peeves were personal, but they were also based on years of learning from experience that the people I had spent five years writing assignments for considered them abominations as well. One of the tasks of the current generation is to try to help the next one avoid some of the mistakes made by the previous ones. In some circles that is referred to as “progress”.

            – 30 –

          9. I am completely with you, EAB, on this one. why use two words when one will do.

            While I’m here, whatever happened to the verb “to lend”. Why did we have to convert the noun “loan” into a verb, when there was a perfectly good and distinct verb all along.

          10. And, why don’t I remember to put a question mark at the end of a question?

          11. “My criticism of “reason why” is an opinion, not a point of scholarship (as are most of the quibbles on this thread).”

            Thanks for clearing that up. Previously you seemed to be making statements such as ‘There is no reason to use the word “why” after the word “reason” when the latter word is used as a noun. When “reason” is used as a verb, the “why” is sometimes applicable.’ as if they were incontrovertible facts.

            “…but his article on Orwell’s essay is not scholarship, it is opinion and only that.”

            Sure, but so is Orwell’s opinion on what is and what is not bad writing. Also, that particular essay by Pullum is not entirely an opinion piece; it has a “scholarly” core too. For example, Pullum provides data to support his claim that various factual assertions and predictions made by Orwell in his essay turned out to be incorrect.

            Your dogged insistence on the use of two words where one will do is also that, and possibly just a manifestation of childlike delight in being contrary.”

            Thanks for the condescension. I will contend that my “insistence” is just a “manifestation” of a (“childlike”, if you will) “delight” in pointing out that there is nothing wrong with the use of the phrase “reason why” in the context in which I used it; and that your insistence that such usage is wrong was grounded just in your personal preferences–which are by no means universal–and not in any kind of incontrovertible grammatical truth.

            “Continuing this wrangling is about as profitable as debating the relative merits of two different cults…er…denominations of Christianity.”

            Thanks again for clearing that up.

            Maybe my list of pet peeves were personal, but they were also based on years of learning from experience that the people I had spent five years writing assignments for considered them abominations as well. One of the tasks of the current generation is to try to help the next one avoid some of the mistakes made by the previous ones. In some circles that is referred to as “progress”.

            I agree with your sentiments, and am genuinely grateful for your concern. However, if I am reading your last two sentences right then I must disagree with the insinuation that enforcement of random pet peeves (such as the “reason why” peeve above) and the banishment of other personal “abominations” constitutes some kind of “progress”. I will also point out that in this specific case, the phrase “reason why” is no invention of the “next” generation; it is in current usage, and has also been around for at least a century. Further, I hope that you, as a qualified linguist, would surely agree that redundancy is often (legitimately) used for emphasis, and there is nothing inherently wrong with such usage.

      1. Very good.

        But, no, no — 687.291335… I get 2 stars, not just one. On second thought, — 9488.53102…?? (non-commutative two stars, right?)

        Given the predilections of this website, and away from the joking above, was not the ‘Octopussy’ of Bond rather heretical?

    4. I already responded to your duplicate post (harrumph!) in the other thread, but as a quick recap, “octopi” is legitimate for the same reason “octopuses” is: because it’s what actual English speakers actually say.

        1. If people understand what his intent is, then yes. The whole point of language is communication and nothing else.

    5. Do I correctly understand that Greek influenced Latin?

      If I correctly recall from my h.s. Latin, the fourth declension plural ends in “-us.”

  10. I’m quite tired of “going forward.” It’s a sort of empty-air prefix that I hear much too often: “Going forward, we need to be able to address any problems that arise.” “Going forward, the school will add new certificate programs.” “Going forward, the administration will propose legislative remedies.”

    Going forward, we could expunge “going forward” without any loss.

  11. I think it’s code for “Accept my subjective interpretation of my anecdotal reports as I present them, at face value, or you are not respecting me.” High-handed emotional blackmail in a small, semantically poisoned pill. The folks who utilize this phrase invariably have contempt for the “lived experience” of those whose conclusions contradict theirs. The experience of anyone they consider less aggrieved than they are is only blind prejudice, in their solipsistic view. It’s a cheap trick that works.

  12. I didn’t get a chance to post on the last thread on this topic because I was up to my ears in kids (still am, but they’re all feeding themselves now with no help from me).

    I HATE “passed away”. It’s DIED, OK? L

    2. I’ll second that, surpassed in annoyance by the truncated form “He passed.” Sounds like a bad case of flatulence got him.

      1. From the Broadway show, “1776”:

        Continental Congress recording secretary calling the roll:

        “Rhode Island?”

        Member:

        “Rhode Island has gone to the privy.”

        Secretary:

        “Very well then; Rhode Island passes.”

    4. As someone whose mother recently passed away, I don’t like the harshness of “died” — it makes me recoil. When you are emotionally close to the person who died, the less likely you will be to want to hear the word “died.”

      Euphemisms exists for a good reason.

      (Experiment: say to yourself, ‘[name of your child] just died’ and then ‘[name of your child] passed away’ — see how you react. Then do it saying the words out loud — see how you react. Then have someone else say the words to you — see how you react.)

      1. So, a few days after my father died, I was back at work and went with my colleagues for drinks at lunchtime. An ex-colleague bumped into us and, seeing me, said, “Well, you look bloody miserable!” I replied, “My dad died at the weekend.” His face was priceless.

        /@

        1. I have every intention of dying, and refuse to pass away. I hope my friends and relatives will respect that final wish.

      2. gr8hands, I agree with you. Sometimes I can take “died,” sometimes it’s too harsh. This is not an idiom I’d ever get snooty about!

      3. Euphemisms exist as fodder for comedians. And to obfuscate. I enjoy the laughs but I’m not fond of obfuscating.

        My father died. I had a sister. She died. My mother is 95 and will die sometime in the not-too-distant future. My children William and Margaret will die someday, I hope I have died by then because I have seen the pain my parents felt when my sister died before they did. Death is painful for survivors but it is part of the real world.

        For me, when people say “he/she passed away” I conclude that they are either playing make-believe for some religious reason or they are acting like (or treating me like) a child. I prefer facing death as an adult.

          2. I know you didn’t. You’re one of my favorite posters here, by the way.

            I just don’t think this is an area we need to get prescriptive in; especially regarding conversation, which is really what a comment thread is.

            I’m actually pretty down with “died” myself, the majority of the time. But sometimes it just…trips me up. We’re all entitled to our own emotional baggage. (Or victim of it, anyway!)

            And sometimes you just need to use a new word/phrase to avoid multiple uses of the original. Plus, to me, “passed away” is so common as to be unremarkable, essentially synonymous with “died.”

    5. My wife died just last month. She didn’t pass away or pass on, because there is nowhere to pass on to. She worked her way through her bucket list, then kicked the bucket. I grieve enormously for her, and miss my best friend, but she’s dead now, and my life will go on.

      *sniff*

      Sorry – didn’t mean to get quite so personal, but it helps me to share.

        1. Thank you, Jerry. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, and that makes your kind words all the more genuine to me.

      3. I’m so sorry to hear that! Being married to your best friend is the ideal, IMO. I can only imagine your pain.

  13. From a philosophical perspective, the term “lived experience” was made popular by the German Phenomenological movement of Husserl and later Heidegger back in the early 20th century. The term had a technical meaning which is likely being distorted by your example of political activists, but it nevertheless is suppose to denote the concrete reality of daily life and not the rarified Cartesian substitute. So, of course, part of the awkwardness of the phrase in English stems from the fact that it’s translated from a German source.

    1. And of course it then inherits superficial understanding of what might be at best superficial approach to matters. (Phenomenology, whether vaguely scientific or “philosophical” refuses to investigate mechanisms.)

    1. Wonderfully expressed by David Mitchell here:
      youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

      Mind you, I couldn’t care less

      😉

    2. The trouble is, in America at least, “I could care less” and “I couldn’t care less” have come to mean the same thing. “I could care less” is now an idiom that’s taken to mean the opposite of what it says, like “near miss.” Or like “Tell me about it,” which means “Don’t tell me about it [because I already know].”

      As Michael Quinion says in World Wide Words, “There’s a close link between the stress pattern of ‘I could care less’ and the kind that appears in certain sarcastic or self-deprecatory phrases that are associated with the Yiddish heritage and (especially) New York Jewish speech. Perhaps the best known is ‘I should be so lucky!’ in which the real sense is often “’I have no hope of being so lucky,’ a closely similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic inversion of meaning.”

      1. Probably every linguistics major has heard the story of the professor who was giving a talk on cross-language positive and negative affirmations. He said, “In some languages, a double negative cancels out the negative and results in a positive, which is how most Modern English speakers understand it. In Middle English, however, double or even multiple negatives intensified the negative meaning of the statement. These two patterns occur in many other languages. But one pattern that never occurs is a double or multiple positive resulting in a negative meaning.”

        The which the traditional bored student from the back of the hall said, “Yeah, yeah.”

        1. Whenever I’ve seen it elsewhere, this joke commonly ends with the student’s sarcastic “Yeah, right.”

          1. I know a lot of people hate this expression, but I feel it’s appropriate here: “Whatever”.

          2. Thing is, E.A., “Yeah, yeah” really isn’t a double positive. Rather, it’s either a weary affirmative, or it’s a simple reiterative, like “No, no.”

      1. You are correct, as your example shows. It still annoys me to hear “We’ll be back in an hour’s time.” or something similar.

        1. At the human scale ’tis ok to split space-time into its pseudo-components, space or time to measure distance as long as the relevant frame of reference is understood by the sender and receiver. Example, Pyongyang is 20 minutes from Guam (via Ami ICBM).

  16. “It is what it is.” For a while, this was the stock answer to everything for most of my co-workers.

    Or, even worse, when someone doesn’t hear you, instead of “excuse me?” or “please repeat” or whatever, some people will say “Do what now?” I’m always tempted to reply, “Listen! That’s what you should do.”

    1. Or, you strongly suspect that s/he heard you; you know that you were speaking very clearly and sufficiently loudly.

      I’ve taken to occasionally saying, “Am I not speaking clearly? Or is it that you just can’t believe I said what I said?”

      Another locution I’m getting tired of – especially from students as young as 4th graders – is, “What The . . . .?”, leaving off the third word. Do they know what the third word is? Where are they getting this locution? From home? Peer group? Popular media?

      “Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot,” from the Navy phonetic alphabet from years ago.

  17. As long as we’re going this way, “Rise up” never fails to get a rise out of me. You show me how to “rise down,” I’ll settle down about it.

        1. I tend to use arise and arose. No need for any uppery. Arose is arose is arose.

  18. Larger, higher, grander, etc., truth or reality. Usually just seems like a carny trying to sell you, or maybe themselves, something worthless.

      2. I loathe qualifications of unique. Don’t they teach them anything nowadays.

        *Grump*

  19. “First come, first served basis” makes me want to slap someone’s face. Even worse is when I hear “first come, first serve basis” as if they are to good for the d. I hate myself for typing the phrases. I need to shower… I also hate it when ppl say “mute point” instead of “moot point”.

    1. Actually, that means they aren’t taking reservations, so people coming after you won’t be served before you.

  20. Personally myself I hate “Personally myself” & Also as well I detest when people say “Also as well”

      1. Excruciating. Ted Rueter wrote a good piece on this one a while ago. It begins, “Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott asserted that homosexuality is a disease, like kleptomania. Defending the religious basis of Lott’s position, House Majority Leader Dick Armey commented, ‘Both myself and Senator Lott believe very strongly in the Bible.'”

        http://www.drpolitics.com/articles/english.htm

        1. Yes! “My friend and I”, not “Myself and my friend”.

          Don’t they teach… Aw forget it.

          1. “Don’t they teach… Aw forget it.”

            Wouldn’t it be just as – if not more a propos – to say, “Don’t they LEARN …Aw forget it”?

            How many teachers today across the fruited plain said to students, to the effect, “Stop talking and look at me so that I have some idea that you are paying attention!”?

    2. “Also as well” is often used jokingly, as a reference to the old “Wild and Crazy Guys” skits on “Saturday Night Live” (the Festrunk Brothers characters had a poor grasp of English idiom). So before blowing a gasket over that one, be sure whether it’s a reference or an actual attempt at English usage.

  21. One thing is absolutely certain – no matter what one says, there’s bound to be some jerk out there who claims that’s annoying and is absolutely convinced there’s a better way to say it.

    1. As opposed to your official opinion, or the legal opinion rendered by a court.

      1. Which almost never needs clarification in the context in which it gets used. “My personal opinion” usually reveals a desire to wall off whatever comes after from critical, non-personal examination. Like “lived experience.”

  24. There’s always “deepest beliefs” or “other ways of knowing”.

    But the expression I most encourage people to avoid is “as such”. Nine times out of ten, it is used in a way that doesn’t make sense, and a perfectly good word like “accordingly” or “therefore” would have done the job.

    For example: “It’s getting late. As such, I am going to bed.”

    An example of correct usage would be: “I am a grammar Nazi. As such, I like to make obscure points about syntax and word usage.” You should be able to ask, “As WHAT?”, and in this case it’s “As a grammar Nazi…”.

    1. “An example of correct usage would be…”

      Why use the subjunctive? Either the example exists or is doesn’t. If Yoda had been a Grammar Jedi, he would have said, “There is no ‘would’. Either it is or it is not.”

      “An example of correct usage is…” fits the rules Orwell mentions in “Politics and the English Language”.

      1. The other valid use of “as such” is as an exact synonym for “per se.”

      3. I was expecting someone to make this point, actually, and I hesitated given the nature of the thread. I decided to leave it, though, as short for, “an example of correct usage would be if someone said.” But of course, you’re correct.

  25. According to language gurus, certain (apparent) redundancies are allowed as “intensifiers.” But I’ve seen this rationalization taken to the opposite extreme. E.g., the oft-misused “literally” should be forgiven as an intensifier. ??? That claim literally blew my mind. 😉

  27. One from a client conversation I’m listening to now: “On-premise” solution, with the intended meaning that hardware or software is implemented within a company’s data centre. “On-premises” is still jargon-y, but at least grammatically correct.

    /@

  28. Not sure if someone posted this already, but George Carlin has a good bit on this (NSFW)

    1. Sorry the embedding happened. I just pasted the URL, how do I get rid of the embedding?

  29. “ownership experience” & Pre-owned

    As in:-

    A Bentley cannot just become Pre-Owned; it had to earn it.

    Only then can it be guaranteed to continue the unique blend of supreme refinement with pure exhilaration. Your Pre-Owned Bentley ownership experience will also include complimentary copies of the Bentley Owners’ Magazine

    I’ve also just discovered “pre-loved”
    [meaning “pre-owned” as opposed to the more entertaining possibilities of “divorced” or “no-longer-a-virgin” 🙂 ]

    1. I guess my ex-wife was pre-loved, but I didn’t advertise her as such. (not to be confused with my late wife, BTW).

  31. Unfortunately, as much as I can’t stand a lot of “contemporary phrases”, this is a losing battle, because language changes … I do wonder about the technical sense that gets introduced when this happens – e.g., logic instructors are now going to have to explain the “technical sense” of “begs the question” now. And it seems to me that this is a very difficult thing to do – lots of people have a great deal of difficult understanding stipulative definitions. Q: Has anyone studied how this may play a role in science education in specific?

    1. “contemporary” was controversial in the 1950s, when it began to be used to mean “of the present” instead of “at the same time”.

      Whenever I hear “contemporary furniture” I think of the 1950s, “Festival of Britain”, primary coloured balls on the ends of black sticks and “free-form” puddle-shaped tables.

      What you call the “technical sense”, I would call the “strict sense”.

      1. The problem is once the other use becomes established, it *is* a strict sense then. Think of “essay”, which as far as I can tell had originally its French-derived meaning, from “essayer”, to try. But now it refers to a writing style/genre.

  32. It happens so often I’ve had to stop myself from having an emotional reaction every time I hear the language being fractured, but certain words and phrases still make me crazy. One that gets to me every time is “scenario” being used in place of “scene”. As when a reporter says, “What a scenario! Al Pacino is holding hostages in the bank and demanding a sex change operation!”
    One thing’s for sure, everyone who read these comments will start hearing people say the things we complained about in them.

    1. I’d say “scenario” was acceptable because of the invisible aspects of the scene, such as the sex-change operation.

  34. Last week I heard the phrase “expert generalist,” for the first time. Apparently it means someone who knows a lot about many things, but blech.

  35. What I learned from Steven Pinker is that language is descriptive not prescriptive. At the end of the day :), it’s all good.

    1. We are witnessing evolution in action!

      Language can be an art too right? Just like any other art medium most attempts won’t be all that successful, but the less restrictions the more likely it is that something interesting is created.

          1. There’s something that drives me nuts about Wallace & Gromit, and you can see it in the picture accompanying the Wikipedia article you linked to. It’s a feature of almost any Aardman Animations character: their teeth.

            I cannot get past the fact that nearly every character in an Aardman film has upper and lower teeth that do not match. I find it so distracting that I have not been able to watch an entire Nick Park movie since I first saw Creature Comforts back in 1989. All I see are those mismatched teeth and it totally disrupts anything else the director is trying to do. Chicken Run was out of the question. I would* never have been able to sit through an hour and a half of crooked choppers.

            *I deem this a proper use of the subjunctive.

          2. “Crooked choppers” reminds me of Daly ara* CPD on motorcycles. *May still survive in post-Obama Chitown.

          3. Could be a good thesis topic for some grad student. “Crooked Choppers: Dental mismatch as a metaphor for social dysfunction in the art of Nick Park”

        2. You never know. Somebody could get lucky!

          I’m sure many people would have said the same thing about piss. Until the amazingly disgusting Piss Christ that is.

  36. “This door for emergency use only”

    Seriously? With a whole door to write on, they couldn’t find room for the word “is”?

    1. I once heard of a class where people were taught how to write like this.

      Our suburban trains have an emergency communication system, whose signage starts with the number of the carriage in huge letters, has instructions of stultifying obscurity in small print, and a red button to start the system with, with the word “BUTTON” underneath it.

      (I’ll be riding one later today, I’ll try to remember to get a picture.)

      2. I was amused (in a morbid sort of way) when I saw the emergency buttons within the emergency ward of a hospital. Seemed sort of redundant. (Yes, I realize what they must be for, but …)

  37. For some reason, “life experience” would have rolled right by me, but “lived experience” really grates.

  38. My local library sends out a “Courtesy Pre-Overdue Notice” by e-mail a couple of days before a book is due. How about a “Reminder” instead?

    1. I do like the notices, though – they’ve saved me from a lot of fines for overdues.

    3. Probably to emphasize the “overdue” portion, and that they are doing you a favor, a “courtesy notice”.

  39. Recently, a Allan Metcalfe, a linguist who contributes to the blog Lingua Franca, ran a contest on coming up with completely invented rules of grammar and style (like the famous ones about prepositions at end of sentences and split infinitives). The results were what is often referred to as “revealing”.

  41. One that annoys me is “sooner rather than later”, when “soon” would suffice.

  42. This neologism brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

    …along with “this point in time”.

      1. Wow! I always thought Pendle Hill was impressive with its triple tautology. I see from Wikipedia that there is a Pendleton Hill in Connecticut, which could translate as hill hill hill hill.

  43. As Orestes Mantra mentions above, ‘lived experience’ was originally used to translate the German word ‘Erlebnis’ (as opposed to ‘Erfahrung’). This is because ‘Leben’ means life. The notion of Erlebnis was central to the philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey, who is perhaps of interest to readers of this blog given that we owe our distinction between the natural and human sciences in large part to him: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey/

  44. Ha, ha, well, now that the thread’s as good as dead, I hear a wonderful malapropism on the radio.

    I inadvertently caught a bit of a talk show while waiting for the ball game to come on, and was treated to this:

    Host: “Are you married?”

    Caller: “No, I’m singular.”

  45. It also seems to sometimes be a euphemism for giving minorities jobs that previously they would not have been qualified for by conventional means, ie qualifications.

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