Why is this horseshit still going on? Why is it necessary to be “extreme” anything, and at that, so extreme you forget how to spell? “Xtreme” isn’t extreme anymore, it’s boring and predictable. We’ve talked about the “dirty little X” before. We love that X. But “Xtreme” just throws that X right in our faces, [...]
Words I Hate
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Category Archives: Parts of Speech
Pataflafla
In drumming, in particular using the snare drum, there are these things called “rudiments”. A rudiment is a basic pattern one learns to build a kind of drumming vocabulary. There are several national and international drumming organizations that recognize the most important rudiments, and currently there are at least 40 accepted rudiments. These range from [...]
Ombudsman / Ombudsperson
This is what happens when the English language attempts to appropriate a Swedish word. You get one of the most ugly and cumbersome abominations ever to exit your mouth that didn’t involve Pabst Blue Ribbon and a bottle of spray cheese. An ombudsman (or, in even more sickeningly politically-correct parlance, ombudsperson) is someone who acts [...]
Palm
This one is personal. I have always pronounced the L in “palm”. But a few years ago my girlfriend at the time insisted that the L is not pronounced, that it should be pronounced like PAHM. This sounds completely ridiculous to me, but so far every dictionary I’ve encountered has said the same thing: she [...]
Peccadillos
When the English language was created by God (around 4,000) years ago, He never meant for words like this to infect His perfect creation, which is in the image of His own language. But then in the 16th century, some lame-o needed attention and started talking about “peccadillos” when “flaws” or “small sins” would work [...]
Velvet / Velveteen
I have posted these together because they both suffer the same problem: poets love them. And not just hack poets, either. Respectable, even professional poets spew “velveteen” like it was “gossamer”. I have no idea what the poetic obsession with these words are. Velvet is a fabric. At one point, it was a beautiful, luxurious, [...]
Remiss
Remiss is a needy needy word, at least in modern spoken English. I’m sure at some point years ago people actually used “remiss” on its own, actually using it to describe a state of carelessness or negligence. In fact, this definition lives on in its very useful offspring, remission. But today, people do not say [...]
Literally
This one almost goes without saying. “Literally” is quite literally the most bastardized word in the English language. It literally makes me vomit. You will literally grow a penis out of your face and die if you say it. You see what’s going on here? The real meaning of “literally” has been destroyed. Sometimes, this [...]
Sanguine
This word does not deserve to exist. In the US, everyone learns it when studying for the SATs. It has no other usefulness in our language than tripping up vacuous high school juniors. And that’s a pretty shitty life for any word. The problem with this word is that it sounds nothing like its meaning. [...]
AIDS
Technically, it’s an acronym Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome …but after almost 30 years with it rattling around in our lives (and for some of us, our bloodstream) it’s really a word. Sort of like what happened to XEROX (Xygomorphic Endospectral Reproduction Of eXtra pages). When it was first being reported and researched, the disease was given [...]
