These are words which I hear people use almost everyday but seem to have very little justification for their selection of that word, other than a poor vocabulary or the notion that these words are part of a new ‘cool’ street language and affirm their membership of the vacuous masses, walking around, open mouthed and feeding on useless information… ENJOY!!!
1. Guesstimate
2. Eclectic
3. Surreal
4. Proactive
5. Emo
“My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.” – Arthur Scargill
p.s. This list is of words which irritate me personally, there was no scoring system other than the strength of my own contempt for the ill use of these words. Obviously there are many more annoying words out there so please feel free to spam the comments section with your suggestions. Also I feel that I must add that if you are indeed the sort to regularly drop these words in conversations then please don’t be offended by my comments, unless you are culpable of using no.1 in which case I hope you rot to death you impudent f**ks. Have a nice day now! =P
you’re not going to explain how people use there words and why they shouldn’t use them in such a way?
Hmmm. Why is my submit button half a page away?
It’s a list, a glorious, pointless list why take what is a glimpse of Man’s triumph to perfectly order the universe by sullying it with trite subjections?
I could quite happily put down my reasons for why I chose those particular words for acknowledgement but as you may have noticed I was also working on another much bigger article yesterday. The lists are just padding, but quite fun padding as I enjoy the process of inventing topics and ranking things.
But since you insist I’ll explain my choices. Going in reverse order;
5. Emo – This one gets used an awful lot and most of the time rather unfairly, it is used by people to put a negative spin on anything emotional, whether it be art, music, tv, film or just a person’s beahviour. Emo refers to a particular style of energetic punk rock characterised by its introspective and angsty lyrics, often focussing on individual suffering. It often uses the scenario of the uncomfortbale teen years as the inspiration for the lyrics, most likely because teenagers are the keyt market for this kind of music and as such it gives them something to relate to. Strictly within this definition the use of the word is fine, for that is what it was intended, so as you can imagine when people say “Oh my God Nick Cave he is SO emo!” because he wrote a sad song about a women who gets tortured, raped and murdered in her own home then I think you’ll see there is cause for concern there. Also in more general terms it is the use of the word to basically dismiss any genuine emtional response or construct which I find kinda sad, personally. The word has taken on negative connotations which go beyond the playful mockery of eye-linered teenagers abosrbed in their own invented misery and that is quite worrying to me.
4. Proactive – In the psychological sense, in which the etymology of this word lies and therefore its intended and correct use, it is fine to usethis word. It is in the business sense that I find this word annoying. It gets bandied around by a lot of management jobsworths when talking about approaches and people, and whilst when talking about people there is certainly sense in using the word, I can’t help but snag that irksome feeling that they should just settle for ‘productive’ or ‘positive’ instead. The word proactive has such a rich meaning which I’m sure few, if any, of the people who use it understand, and that just gets to me.
3. Surreal – Apparently regular daily events can be described as being surreal nowadays. Like when you are out shopping in the high street or the supermarket and you see a person who looks just exactly like your best friend, or someone at work mistakenly calls you by a siblings name, isn’t that just… surreal?! No it isn’t, it is called a coincidence, and it isn’t all that interesting. Surreal is just a bi-word for weird or slightly surprising, but whilst surrealism is marked by its power to surprise by framing bizarre, hallucinatory and other-wordly images within reality, I hardly think that encounters with quasi-dopplegangers was what Andre Breton had in mind.
2. Eclectic – This is hated for reasons similar for surreal, it gets used too often by people who try to put too much emphasis on themselves, their experiences, their lives. Trying to make everything sound more interesting, or complicated than it really is. I estimate that at least 75% of people have described their taste in music as electic once in their lives. NOw by definition eclectism isn’t too difficult to obtain, just like a bunch of things that seem to be very different. It is the fact that people don’t realise that there isn’t as much difference between those reference points that makes their use of the word a betrayal of its meaning. People say for example listen to hard rock and Britney Spears simultaneously and label themselves ‘eclectic’ because they think there is a huge difference in one type of popular music and another, sure enough they sound different but technically they aren’t. Poeple just seem too eager to want to be able to use the word, really they are not eclectic but lack an ability to exercise any discernible taste, thus these are probably also the people who would say “Oh I dunno I listen to a bit of everything.” eugh, horrible, boring people.
1. Guesstimate – Well this one is simple, either say ‘guess’ or ‘estimate’ don’t combine them, they have pretty similar meanings to each other and are both good enough on their own. It isn’t clever,it isn’t witty, it is just horrendous, like splicing the genes of a dog and a cat and getting a bit pile of shit as a result. I scowl at people who use this word in public; complete strangers even, I don’t care, the practice of using this (I resist calling it a word it is more like a pre-school patois) must be completely destroyed!