Yes, it’s time for another chance to blow off steam about words and phrases that irritate you. I have three today: all, of course, are from HuffPo—the source of everything risible and reprehensible. You’re invited to contribute your favorites in the comments.

1.) “Sick” meaning “cool” or “great.” This is another neologism which means the opposite of how it sounds. And it’s one of those words whose use brands you as being au courant, though of course anyone using “sick” in this way wouldn’t know what “au courant” means. Here’s an example from HuffPo, which further degrades itself by putting quotes around “sick”, quotes whose purpose is unclear. Is it to indicate that they know the word doesn’t really mean “sick” in a bad way, or to show that it’s slang? Who knows? Who cares?

The most famous use of “sick”, of course, comes from this viral video of “supermodel” Bella Hadid going shopping for Nike sneakers. If you have any ear for the spoken word, her use of language will curl the soles of your shoes. Note her continuous use of  “sick” and “dope” (means the same thing as “sick”), as well as her annoying sentence preface, “You know what?” Note also her implication at 1:38 that if you wear the right sneakers she’ll have sex with you (“get it”), but if you wear the wrong ones, well, it’s “quiet for you.”

You need to listen to this as part of your cultural education, but take my word for it—it’s painful.

2.) “I’m all about” or “We’re all about”. This really irritates me because it’s not even close to being accurate. Except, perhaps, for an Olympic swimmer in a competition who’s “all about swimming”, nobody is ever “all about” anything. But HuffPo’s editors (all privileged white women, of course), were all about being hydrated and wearing “comfortable-as-hell” tights.

Oh, which brings up another irritant: the word “hella“, a wrongly used contraction of “hell of” and actually meaning “really” or “strongly” (see above). Belowis example from HuffPo, which is calling out a swimsuit worn by a model of the wrong race:

3.) “You do you”, meaning,  “just act as you normally would.”  Everything I could say about this puerile Deepity was said in my earlier post about “It is what it is.” Both are examples, as the NYT article below says, of tautophrases (see below). And don’t get me started on Chrissy Teigen, who has become internet famous without any discernible talent beyond Tweeting. “You do you, Chrissy”.

From the NYT piece below:

William Safire, writing in these pages in 2006, coined a word for these self-­justifying constructions: “tautophrases.” This was in the midst of his investigation into the ubiquity of “It is what it is,” as evidenced in its use by cultural specimens as disparate as Britney Spears and Scott McClellan, a press secretary for President George W. Bush. (Pause to reminisce.) Whether the subject is an imperfect situation to be endured (“The new coffee in the break room is the pits”) or an existential conundrum (“My body is a bunch of atoms working in brief harmony before death returns them to the universe”), “It is what it is” effectively ends the discussion so that we can stop, nod in solemn agreement and move on.

The dreadful neologisms just keep pouring in, almost as if I were a bad boy this year and get these things instead of lumps of coal at Christmas. In just a few days I’ve accumulated four words that should be ruthlessly expunged from the literature and from the vocabulary of thinking people. Three of them come from the fount of bad writing—HuffPost—but one comes from Marie Claire, a fashion magazine. Click on each screenshot to go to the article.

The first one is particularly odious:

1.) “Gift” as a verb.  Since when do we need to use the word “gift” as a verb instead of simply “give”. You could argue that “Well, gift means giving a present as opposed to other things you could be giving.” My response: “Take a number and kiss my tuchas: the context tells you the meaning.” Here’s one example from HuffPost:

Sadly, “gift” as a verb is so firmly ensconced in the argot that I fear it will be with us forever.

2.) “Tea”, meaning “gossip”.  This is a term much beloved by Generation Xers (okay Xer), but it’s not useful, for it’s the grammatical equivalent of virtue flaunting. Using it tells the reader or listener, “If you understand this usage, you’re as cool as I am.” And so we have “spill the tea” for “divulging gossip”, and ludicrous headlines like the following.

(By the way, the fact that PuffHo even publishes articles like this shows how pathetic they are.) This one takes the metaphor farther by rating how titillating the gossip is on a scale from “room temp to scalding”:

3.) “Insta” for “Instagram”. One of the more useless platforms of social media is Instagram—basically a platform for showing yourself off or for making money by showing off you using somebody else’s products. Now that’s not always true of everyone, but it’s a general truth the whole world knows. And “Insta”, as a repugnant contraction like “fam” (for “family”), has given rise to the deplorable phenomenon of “influencers”, which I’ve mentioned in this series before.

Often “Insta” is a noun referring to the site, but, even worse, it can be a verb—as in the subheading of the article below:

To me, the world would be a better place if Instagram were to vanish. I can see uses for Facebook, like connecting with old friends, and even for Twitter, like posting cat photos or breaking news, but the only use I see for Instagram is to flaunt yourself before the world and, if you’re female, often en déshabillé. I believe even I have an Instagram account, but I assure you that I didn’t set it up nor do I post on it. Somebody else fabricated it.

4.) “Shoppable.” If I mentioned this word, and asked you what it meant, what would you say? I would have answered with a question: “A venue where you would be able to shop, like a ‘shoppable’ food exposition?”  Wrong! It apparently means “something that even you are able to buy”, as in this headline from Marie Claire.  Yes, for only £395, you lesser mortals of the female persuasion can own a pair of the same shoes that the Duchess of Cambridge wore during the holidays.

The word sounds ugly and out of place, and would be so even if it were moved before the words “Green Emmy Shoes”. My own suggestion would have been: “Where to buy Kate Middleton’s Green Emmy Shoes from her Sandringham Walk”, but that wouldn’t have been so hip.

Now you know what to do: all of us are nurturing pet peeves about certain words or phrases. Air your grievances below.

The list keeps growing so fast that I can barely contain my bile.  Here are a few stinkers that have bothered me lately. (And of course, add your own in the comments.) All examples come from that bastion of grammatical degeneracy: HuffPost.

1.) “noms” for nominations. This is one of those “look cool” truncations like “fam” for family or “romcom” for “romantic comedy”. The problem, of course, is that the word also means “food” to all Internet cat lovers. Why can’t they just say “nominations”?

2.) “vacay” for “vacation”. This one really ticks me off, as you save only one lousy syllable. Does this mean that “vocation” will become “vocay”, too? And it’s only a matter of time before “fashion” becomes “fash”.

3.) “relatable“.  When I hear someone use or write this word, I immediately mark them down on the neuron scale. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much (it may even be in the dictionary), but somehow the longer phrase “that we can relate to” seems better. Or, better yet, what’s wrong with “congenial” or “appealing”?

4.) “advancements”.  What the bloody hell? Why isn’t “advances” good enough?

Don’t worry—I have more. And I’ll be here all year, folks.

It’s that time of year when the heat makes one splenetic, ready to denounce phrases used by the young, woke, or “with-it”.  Here are a few of my most despiséd terms, and of course you’re welcome to add yours.

It’s time for the Daily Two Minutes of Hate!

1.) “Back in the day”.  Of course this means “way back when” or “in old times that I remember”, but it’s annoyingly imprecise. When I hear it I want to ask, “In WHAT day? When?” It seems easier to say, “When I was a child” or something similar.

Example from boston.com:

He’s a resilient guy, this Conan O’Brien, and now he’s rising from the ashes again, re-re-re-bearded and ready to puppet dance, hoping to promote his C-SPAN3 show by making guest appearances on everything from CNN’s “Spitzer Blagojevich’’ to “The Daily Show With Dennis Miller.’’ But we’ve known O’Brien is a fighter since back in the day, when he was the David to Jay Leno’s Goliath.

2.) “Passed” for “died”.  This, of course, is a euphemism designed to avoid the word “died” or even the notion that someone is gone for good. Further, it implies that there’s an afterlife: that somebody passed on the way to somewhere else. We need to face up to the fact that everyone is going to die, but one way to deny that is to use words like “passed”. Now I don’t call out people for using that about someone they knew, as that would be churlish, but it still curls the soles of my shoes when I hear it.

“Passed away”, however, is better and doesn’t rankle nearly so much.

3.) “Salty”. I can’t tell you how much I despise this word, which, according to the Urban Dictionary, means “when you are upset over something little.” Alternatively: “The act of being upset, angry, or bitter as result of being made fun of or embarassed. Also a characteristic of a person who feels out of place or is feeling attacked.”

Here’s one example by a social-media-savvy Congressional representatives who is trying to be cool (note the Spanish—an attempt to show solidarity with her equally vocal sister).  I also can’t stand the “sorry not sorry” phrase, which is odious but should at least have a comma or semicolon after the first word:

4.) “It is what it is.” (I’m sure I’ve highlighted this before.) A friend said this the other day and I said, “What does that mean?” The response: “You can’t do anything about the situation.” But often that’s not the case, and if that’s true then the phrase devolves to a watered-down version of Vonnegut’s “so it goes.” In other words, it’s a conversational place filler meant to make you sound cool.

Your turn!

It’s time for another installment of “words and phrases that repel me”. Today we have four, and I’ll use as examples my favorite website to hate, HuffPost. (Click on screenshots to see the shameful usage.)

1.) Impactful.  I’m not even going to look this up to see it’s a word; it probably is in the OED or some place similar. But it’s odious, repugnant, and odiferous. Yes, I know it’s shorter than the alternatives, though some adjectives, like “effective” can occasionally replace it. It sounds awkward.

2.) Dragged.  As in “throw shade on”, meaning, “criticized” or “vilified”. It’s with-it millennial jargon, and it’s also confusing, for those who don’t know its use in the argot might think that someone is literally being dragged. (And don’t get me started on “literally”.)

3.) Haters. To shut down discussion of any topic, just refer to critics or opponents as “haters.” Nobody wants to be a hater, and it’s a good way to mock (even if it doesn’t silence) those whom you don’t like. And no, AOC didn’t “shut down” anybody: as far as I know, the GOP critics of her views are still there. I may have used this word before in a “words I hate” post. I guess I’m a word hater.

4.) Minoritized. This is an example of Orwell’s notion that new words and phrases can be constructed to carry a hidden political message.  It used to be “minorities”, which was accurate in singling out groups that were not in the numerical or political majority. By referring to “minoritized” people, you now add the notion that they have been diminished or oppressed. That may be the case, but sometimes it’s not, and, at any rate, why not use the words “oppressed minorities” or “oppressed” instead?

Now, of course, it’s your turn to vent.