Linguistic tics that drive you crazy

Updated Nov. 2014

Well, I surely am not updating this page very much, though I often think of it (somewhat like my "dreams and questions" post, which I think of nearly every day but somehow never update).  What literate person does not think of language annoyances s/he encounters every day?  If you have a tic(k) you'd like to extract (or dream or question, go ahead and add.

Anyway, here's a couple of phrases/things that are really on my nerves these days:

1) "Terms and Conditions Apply"  Honestly, why not just say or show at the end or bottom of every ad "we didn't really mean it," or "sorry you're a sucker if you believed us"?  I'm just writing off the top of my head now, but I'm curious as to how this phrase became so ubiquitous.  I guess it's just because advertisers don't have to use a modicum of truth now as when once they may have ever had to.  I associate "terms and conditions apply" with entities like telcos or media companies who try to hook you with a simple sale and then strangle you with fine print for years as if with a telephone cord (that's a thing--it used to be attached to a "phone"; it was long and stretchy and curly so it could adapt to your every twist and turn).  Or there's car companies offering you great deals before they tell you what you're really in for with leases and loans and financing and so on and on.  I see now American car companies are always advertising ridiculous savings, such as "savings of up to $15 000!!"  Well, say I wanted to buy a truck.  Seems to me like only a dork would pay more than about $40 000 at most for a thing that is mostly a slab of metal on the back end.  But every day, I drive by a dealership offering "$15 000 in savings!!"  Why not just put up a signboard saying "Trucks: $25 000!"  What kind of rube or idiot falls for the "15 000 off" pitch?  I'd like to show up for my next Dodge Dart and haggle over how much I'll get back if I just agree to drive one off the lot for free.  1 000?  2 000?  Maybe I'll get the dealer to throw in free gas for 36 mos. if I approve him.

2) "Our thoughts are prayers are with. . . ."  Nope, they're not.  So ubiquitous has the phrase become that it is merely now an expression of our detached, electronic, moral and emotional feelinglessness.  Robots say it, type it, state it, read it. . .every day.  How come we have so many "thoughts are prayers" to give out, these days?  Is it because we cannot imagine acting or doing?  Since "thoughts and prayers" is such an empty, cliched, hollow, meaningless phrase, one wonders that the occasional person doesn't try to alter it, say by actually trying to cite something specific about the lamented or the aggrieved that really indicated a knowing and engaged and emotional connection between condoler and condolee.  But I guess Twitter only gives you so many characters. . . .

3) The apparent disappearance of the past perfect.  This drives me more crazy every day.  Why?  I can only think because of its so-speedy vanishing and equally rapid supplantation.  You're supposed to say: "If I had have known he had three aces, I wouldn't have bet," not "If I would have known he had three aces, I wouldn't have bet."  This contemporary constant placement of the speculative future conditional (or call it the conditional perfect) in the _past_ is just incredibly annoying.  Why is the past perfect disappearing?  Well, I'd say it's just because it's kind of hard to say--two h/huh sounds in a row.  To some it may also sound ungainly, but to my ancient mind it actually sounds rather emphatic, which is often what we want the past perfect to sound like.  Every time I use the past perfect these days, I am conscious of just how weird and strange I must sound--just like I do when I use the English subjunctive ("if I were a rich man," vs. the now inevitable "if I was a rich man").
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I’m not going to re-fight battles over serial commas or split infinitives, though I’d be happy to, if you ask me, irregardless.  “Impact” as a verb—I’m there.  "Due to"--sure.

No, I’d kind of like to reserve this post for pet peeves of mine, and yours, if you like, mainly discussing the most _overlooked_ and/or most recent outrages against the tongue/expression I’ve/we've come upon.  I often venture an opinion on why the linguistic changes I'm apprehending are occurring.  Others may have other opinions.

Foolishly, I decided to express my annoyance at tics in a _single paragraph_.  This was my way of trying, unsuccessfully, to limit myself to a brief, incisive comment.  Of all my posts with which to do this with, this was the most boneheaded.  I wanted just to limit myself and make sure I had a brief, quick (pointless or otherwise) intervention.  Didn't work, clearly, and you can see the results for many entries in discursive paragraphs that could constitute several or many paragraphs.  Whatever.  One can--can--and often really does--edit.

As/Because

The surest sign of a person new to the language, or its sophisticated use, is the use of "as."  "As" expresses a comparative relationship: "It was as hot as July."  "Because" expresses a cause-effect relationship: "I went home because I was tired."  One of the surest dead give-aways that you don't know anything about writing is when you pompously and desperately attempt to use "as" to express cause-effect relationships.  Happens every day.  Often the most pompous of all use it.  Keep doing it, and, indeed, one day the sanction will indeed be universal.  But to people who grasp the language, you will only ever look silly and pathetic, and you will have revealed definitively your lack of knowledge.  Yes, you can reference that (see "Reference," below).

Could care less

People of the faintest education and intellect love to use this phrase constantly.  A couple of micro-presences who spring to mind are the FAN590's Pat Steinberg and Rob Kerr.  They love to use this phrase, because they think they're sounding tough and dismissive and jock-like.  Only problem is, they just expressed how much, yes, they really *do* care about what, comically, they just tried to dismiss (rough, tough guys that they are).  It's a basic little test in logic and rationality, and that's --tough-- for many.  If you really don't care about something, you indicate as much by saying "I could NOT care less."  That is, if there's something you really don't care about, you say that you are not able to care less, or give a damn.  But if you do, indeed, give a damn about something, then you would, logically, allow that, well, you "could" care less.  That is, there are other things you care less about, but on this issue, sure, you maybe do care a bit more.  With a faint grasp of oral and written expression, Rob Kerr and Pat Steinberg tough it out, acting all tough about how they "could care less."  Silly bois who can't read, they don't realize just what pantywaists they revealed themselves to be by observing, unwittingly, that, indeed, they *do* care.  It may be stupid to be tough, but it has sure got to be tough to be stupid.  If you *really* wanted to be tough and cool, you _could_ try just saying the phrase accurately, giving emphasis to the NOT--"I could NOT care less."  You might find it would work just as well, and the dorks you're saying it to won't notice anyway.  Win-win.

Drop the writ

Yes, it's been who knows how many generations since this idiotic cliche took over from "draw up the writ," but it still rankles with me.  It's just such an idiotic image.  I can, yes, see "a hat thrown in the ring"  or "a gauntlet thrown down," but a "writ" (that is, something written) being "dropped," is just phenomenally stupid.  Hold up a piece of paper in front of you.  Now let it drop.  Watch it flutter aimlessly until it hits the ground.  How stupid can you get?  One draws up a writ on a sheet of paper with a writing instrument--or a computer or whatever--who cares--but one does not "drop" it.  This reminds me of all the kids I know who call laptops "labtops."  They are very unaccustomed to seeing words in writing, but they have been in labs, so they just naturally assume a small computer must be a "labtop," not something anyone, including people not in a lab, could just use portably on their persons.  Whenever I hear anyone say "drop the writ," I know I am in the presence of a very stupid person who could no less discern between a snowfall than an ice-cream cone sitting atop his/her head.

Efforting

D'jep, it sure does sound gauche and silly.  But I don't know, in a strange way, I don't mind it so much, yet.  "Efforting" follows in that age-old tradition now of English speakers turning nouns into verbs, like "impact" and so on.  People actually used to be upset by neologisms such as "nationalize" and "rationalize."  I'm so often amused when I hear linguists talk about "prescriptivists" vs. "descriptivists."  Frankly, I've never really known anyone who is or or was or who would describe him/herself as a "prescriptivist."  So it's a fake debate.  What a prescriptivist could, theoretically, be, though, would be someone who lamented the passing from use of great and useful descriptive words and phrases and constructions.  Just because something is new and is happening doesn't make it wonderful or signal organicness or vitality.  Car crashes happen, but they aren't wonderful or renewing.  Anyway, so far, "efforting" has been almost exclusively confined to the media ("we're efforting on that story now!!"), and there, it kind of makes sense.  I mean, it's glib, it's gushy/breathless, it tries to impress with its new/nouvelles-ness, it's used by people who have spent little time learning about English--and so on and on.  I have a hard time imagining "efforting" having alot of uptake.  Would a kid being pressed on his/her homework bleat: "but dad, I'm efforting!"?  If you're late for a lunch date, would you call your lunchmate and say: "I'm efforting, I'm really efforting, but traffic is hell!"?  Even journalists who use "efforting" unwittingly show how awkward and idiotic the word is by usually turning it into a phrasal verb or a kind of tautological construction with two verbs, anyway.  I guess we'll see.  For now, I don't mind the fact that the word is mostly used by airheads.  Then again, people who used "irregardless" used to be sympathized with for their ignorance; now, "irregardless" is in the dictionary and is used quite seriously often by people who should and maybe even do know better.  Maybe in a hundred years someone will write a tiny "oid," let's say (for they won't be called "blogs" then, I would assume), and tell readers about how "efforting" once didn't even exist, and how it came to be so popular.

Future Hall of Famer

Somebody should write a good blog someday about the great halls of fame.  I think the greatest and toughest always used to be the LPGA hall of fame up until the late 1990s.  The women had far and away the toughest and most stringent standards, and it really meant something.  The other halls were always fairly tainted anyway--the NHL voted on by buddies, many nobodies getting in; the MLB compromised infinitely by race and drugs and gambling and the striated history of that great game that also mimicked the society it was played before.  Now, "future hall of famer" means about the same thing as "supersizing" your fries.  Sports talkers continue to say, constantly, "future hall of famer" because they think that if they say "future hall of famer," so saying will somehow include them in the pantheon.  That is, recognizing the greatness of another will somehow shed an afterglow on the person who stated it.  Thus, sports talkers continue to say, ad nauseam, even as they demean and diminish the phrase, "future hall of famer."   I'm giving it 50 years, maximum, before we are _all_ in the hall of fame, and then we'll invent a new way to bring accolades upon ourselves, athletes and non-athletes alike.

Home in/Hone in

In the sense that to hone means to sharpen, it makes faint sense to me that people will think that to “hone in” makes some kind of sense, but what an evil and wrong sense it is.  The far less evil term is “home in,” as in the pigeon, finding its home.  Or, if you like, WWII bombers “homing in” on their targets.  “Hone” makes no sense whatsoever of any kind ever, but yet it is used, no doubt by those who live in a “hone.”  Could anyone just think about this, even for just a second?  You know what a home is—at least I think you do—so you can imagine “homing” in on something.  Now imagine your “hone.”  Once you’re done “honing” in on it, you can ask me for a band-aid.

literally
another battle lost.  This adverb is now used almost exclusively as an intensifier, without any reference to anything actually literal.  There's an amusing/poignant irony in the sense that those who most now use "literally" (as in: "like, oh gee, wow, like, dude") are those most unlikely to have a sense of anything literal, literally.

Lose/Loose
e.g. "She thought that she would loose her boyfriend."  I can't speak for you and where you live, but having taught at post-secondary institutions for many years, I can say that well under 15%, and probably only around 5% of university students in Canada (cross-country), can distinguish between the words "loose" and "lose."  This isn't a tic or anything, just a sad fact that both amuses and bothers me.  That these tiny words should be so unlearnable to the people who will be supposedly zapping our tumours and selling our houses and managing our financial portfolios is sad, sad indeed.  The tiniest, most basic and common words cannot be spelt by people with university education.  Why?  Just a basic unfamilarity with the written word, I guess.  If seeing a word in print were as unfamiliar to you as seeing a jockey atop a dragon, well, I guess you wouldn't know whether or not a loose grasp of communication were a loss or if you were losing anything, at all.  Notably, non-English speakers or ESL learners don't have as much trouble with English verbs like this as people who have been brought up with English do.

Pore/Pour

To study or go over something closely is to pore over it.  Maybe one in 50 people now grasp this (ok, probably much less).  If you "pour" over something, you are probably using water or gravy or something.

Refer/Reference

There's a word for that--how is it that “reference” is now used almost exclusively (?) as a verb.  I discovered one of my colleagues using it recently.  Then John Doyle of the Globe and Mail, who really ought to know better, was right up there at the bar.  “Reference” is a noun, as in a “reference library,” or a “reference book.”  There’s a good old handy English word that can handle “reference,” and it is called “refer.”  Yep, that’s right.  The verb is “to refer.”  In other words, if I want to “refer” to a book, I can just do it, just like that.  I don’t even have to “reference” it, because then I’d look really stoopid referencing a reference book in the first place.  The reason “reference” has taken the place of “refer” in common discourse is because people, such as John Doyle, think they can sound much cooler and erudite and educated if they can only add one more syllable to their. . . .  Well John, take it away.

Roil/roiling

People, it's a perfectly decent word that can be used perfectly decently on occasion.  But now it is so ridiculously overrused that it risks losing any meaning whatsoever.  Could we all, please, just stop roiling so goddamn much?  If people knew how stupid they looked when they were roiling, like when they were doing the chicken dance, I'm sure they'd stop doing it. 

so/Well

Looks like this battle has been lost for now, and it all happened so fast.  I have no idea how it happened.  Not so long ago, and over quite a period of time, I found I was grated upon by Slavic speakers in central Europe who, without fail, began responses to queries or started unmeditated reflections with “so” (it usually sounded kind of drawn out, like “saaawh.”  With some success, I urged them to begin conversational, informal forays with “Well,” for this, as I had long known, was a common way to begin a comment that was quite common across the English-speaking world.  The Slavs explained to me that they got their “so’s” from German, which most of them spoke, and that they therefore followed a pattern they’d heard in another language they’d learned.  Fair enough.   Anyone out there remember anything?  I remember almost every speculative question being answered (often politely or with an understanding of one’s interlocutor’s point of view) with “Well, . . .”, or just a general unformed, informal thought being vocalized initially with “Well, . . . .”  It’s like in French, in which, admittedly, conversation is probably relished a fair bit more than in English.  You will always hear French people begin with “Bien,” or “Bien mais,” or Bien, ou peut-etre que. . . .”  Notice that the French place the coordinating conjunctions such as “but” or “or” _after_ the “well” (bien), which is where it should be. But in English, now??!! Everything, even in English-speaking North America, seems invariably to begin with a finger-pointing, jabbing, shut-down “so.”  Back up a bit.  “So” is one of seven coordinating conjunctions in English—or, for, nor, so, yet, but, and and.   Since no-one uses, or knows how to use “for” or “nor” as coordinating conjunctions anymore (but fear not, brave hearts, it can still be done—it’s just that no-one will understand you unless you’re having a game of Pinochle), many authorities are now reducing the list to just five, though these lists still include “so.”  --and don’t get me started on the constantly misused “Yet,” at the beginning of a sentence, as a transition word, when, in fact, it is a transition word, such as “however,” that should be used.  A “coordinating conjunction” is just what it says it is: it is a little word that comes after a comma in a sentence and that binds the two parts of the sentence together so as to make a logical whole.  In other words, the people who now, it seems, nearly universally begin their spoken sentences with a self-important, self-satisfied “SO” are saying that, sure, you just said something to start things off, but now they are coming in and finish off and complete your useless spoken beginning.  Think about it.  If you are young-ish, say 30 or less, talk to someone who is old-ish, say 50 or more.  See if they begin every response to you with “SO.”  Now talk to a younger person, or just hear a talking head on radio or tv. “Well” sounds kind of benign and responsive and dialogic or conversational to me.  “So,” on the other hand, sounds illegitimately (or buffoonishly) authoritative, confrontational, and superior, like kids in a schoolyard saying “yeah, so??”  “So” sounds like trying to take the upper hand and end or finish, rather than continue, a discussion.  So maybe that’s why it has become so common so fast in our online times, in which you’re very unlikely to speak to someone directly, but rather tell him/her your important conclusion some time after the fact of the original communicative offering, or from a remote distance.  I don’t know, but I put it out there, like everything else here, as I respond to and try to make sense of what I take in; any other thoughts are welcome.  And I’m going to have to tell those Slavs: “SOOOaaahhh, you were right all along.”  And then we’ll just sit there and stare at each other for a while, until someone offers another “SOOOaaaahhhh” statement to not start us off again.  Then we’ll reach for our I-devices, and say it again with thumbs, and see if that arouses anything.

Stanch/Staunch

You are staunch if you can get shot in the shoulder (Hollywood stars do it daily) and probe for and pluck the bullet out yourself and stanch the flow of blood with bandaging.  People who think you can stanch with staunch are part of an ever-growing illiterate majority.

Stuart McLean and punctuation between verb and subject

Well, it’s one of the most basic rules of English that you don’t put punctuation between subjects and verbs.  I guess it’s been a long time now that that Stuart, that ageing teenboi, has been making me cringe.  Just the sound of his voice, echoing in some prairie theatre, now makes me cringe.

It didn’t always used to be that way.  He used to be quasi-relevant.  I remember his piece on Anthony Robbins, or the time he just went to a payphone and talked to the people who came up to use it, or when he sat down at a fair and had people come up and talk to him—at those times, Stuart McLean really did represent people and show us how more than just journalism could be done.  But now he’s become a mockery of himself, a kind of drunken Liz Taylor.  Now he seems almost to cringe before we do, trying to make himself loved. 

Since I’m on about it, I’ll offer some Stewie. A basic reason for why I can’t listen to Stuart McLean is because he doesn’t grasp that punctuation doesn’t come between a subject and a verb.  Is Stuart illiterate?  It seems hard to believe, but probably he is.  He is probably one of those (otherwise quite literate) people who can’t spell and who can barely read and who feeds lines to his editors and handlers so that they can make sense of him, so that he can in turn make sense to his audiences. 

Lemme see.  Here’s Stewie talking about Dave and his record store:

            Dave    saw      a truck.  Truck that said,         said,     bread.              Dave said,       I’ve seen that truck,            truck with bread.         He       didn’t have to deliver             that bread.                   But he did.                  That bread.                  Truck driver stopped, stopped, near Dave      said Dave, Dave          I

want you         to have a

loaf.

Dave    said      a          loaf?   

And the truck driver said, “yes” (laugh track)—

a          loaf!!

Dave    said:  “I don’t need a loaf                   now.” (laugh track)

Truck driver said: “I know, Dave, you don’t                         need    a          loaf.”

But I want you to have           one.

Dave took that loaf     inside.  Marlie             or Marly          he’d forgotten which  was estimating their retirement income.  Now.  But it was      just spelling,    now.

Dave    said      “Marlie, I’ve got a       loaf!”  Marlie said: “that’s great, now maybe 2 of us can eat.”  Dave             said:  but I just            got us a            loaf!”  Marlie said:      It’s good, Dave.  Now light us           a candle.              “A       candle,” Dave             said.  “But       I just got this               loaf!”

Marlie said:     “But Dave: we can’t   set fire to         that.”

Dave said:       “But we           don’t need       fire.  “We’ve              got a, a                        loaf!”

And Marly had to agree.  They did, indeed, have a loaf.

Thrash/Thresh

Must be a 100 years ago now that people stopped talking about threshing ideas out, and so forth.  This made sense, for threshing is the act of separating the wheat from the chaff, or figuring things out, making sense out of chaos, separating the valuable from the valueless.  The literal and metaphorical meanings were almost plangent.

Alas, now, everyone “thrashes” things out, which, if you think about it, is hilarious, or a perfect metaphor for our times.  Beating the shit senselessly and insensibly out of something is, indeed, “thrashing” things out.

"Tuh" for "To"

I'm hardly gonna pretend that I don't constantly shorten and elide and drop g's in my everyday colloquial speech, but this "tuuuhhh" coming out of the mouths of not just teen girls but major public figures is really starting to grate.  And I do associate this trend more with women than men. . .there can't be a simpler or more common word than "to," but it is possible that women and men use it more or less in different situations.  The hanging dewlap of the present-day "tuh" is truly taste-offending to regard.  Why is it happening?  Maybe the ongoing schwa-ization of everything. . .it takes just a tiny bit of discipline to try to articulate clearly and use a variety of distinct sounds during speech.

Walk-off

This is a term supposedly initially used by Dennis Eckersley, the great starting and relieving pitcher, in the late 80s/early 90s.  In his parlance, it meant when someone got a hit, particularly a homer, to end a game, and, as the pitcher, you just "walked off," because the game was over, and you had lost.  Such a term could have become a special-use part of the rich baseball lexicon.  However, it has regrettably become an automatic term that virtually all sportscasters must use.  Hence the walk-off triple, the walk-off double, the walk-off single, and, yes, even the walk-off walk.  By beating this term to death by their senses that they must use it or lose their jobs, sportscasters have removed a potentially useful and descriptive and definitive and dramatic term from baseball meaning.

Always more to come.

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