The "Annoying Phrase" Thread

3fingers said:

Along with "living my truth". Apparently what I thought truth meant is open to interpretation.
I'm not sure but we'll "circle back" after we "drill down" to "break through the clutter".

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And then there’s “speaking my truth.”

I fear for a culture in which every person is entitled to his or her “own truth.”

It’s not that people don’t perceive experiences in ways that may differ from other people’s perceptions, but that doesn’t mean that events actually occurred just as one person prefers to recall them.

You’d think this is so obvious as not to need mentioning.

The louder anyone proclaims that they have "the truth", the more inclined I am to suspect that they're a fraud, a fanatic, or a con artist.

tonyb said:

I’m right with you, man. Those two-word (and more) phrases where one word will suffice annoy me as well.

“Skill set”? How ’bout “skills”?

“Lived experience”? What other kind of experience is there? Vicarious experience, maybe? But isn’t that phrase kinda oxymoronic?

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Holy nine year revival, Batman! haha

Actually, the term skill-set refers to a set of skills that are related to one another, usually for the goal of accomplishing some specific task. Skills, in general, could be applicable to anything.

A term that sort of bothers me is 'challenge,' used in the place of 'problem,' especially in terms of behavior. You can say the former, but not the latter. Yes, mom, your child presents some challenges, but is definitely a problem.

^^^^^
I have a silverware set, too, the pieces related to one another, for the goal of accomplishing the specific task of eating dinner. But I just call it silverware.

It’s safe to assume that when we speak of a person’s skills in an employment context, we aren’t concerning ourselves with his ability to tie his shoelaces or operate the dishwasher.*

*Unless the person is a shoe salesman, or a dishwasher.

LizzieMaine said:

I can't abide "reach out," as in "We're reaching out to you today to...." What's wrong with "We're contacting you today..." or "We're asking you today..." or "We're inquiring about..."

Corporate jargon in any form makes me want to vomit, but especially when it's wrapped up in a fake touchy-feely manner exuding from the insincere lips of a cheap PR flack. Get a real job, schmuck.

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"Reach out to so-and-so, then we'll circle back around and huddle and drill-down to the bottom of this."

tonyb said:

Has “at the end of the day” made the roster yet?

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It's near the top of my list.

tonyb said:

^^^^^
I have a silverware set, too, the pieces related to one another, for the goal of accomplishing the specific task of eating dinner. But I just call it silverware.

It’s safe to assume that when we speak of a person’s skills in an employment context, we aren’t concerning ourselves with his ability to tie his shoelaces or operate the dishwasher.

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Yet unless you're working a repetitive task, you apply a different set of skills depending on the task you engage in. In my job, I would use a different set of skills for project organization than data analysis. So it's using the language in a more precise way.

The jargon which develops in an industry is, I think, borne of getting tired of using the same descriptive phrases for too long. The creative individual looks for new ways to say things to avoid repetitive cliches. The choices made sometimes are...unfortunate.

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I'm home! At last, other people who just as picky about nonsense-speak.

Frunobulax said:

Yet unless you're working a repetitive task, you apply a different set of skills depending on the task you engage in. In my job, I would use a different set of skills for project organization than data analysis. So it's using the language in a more precise way.

The jargon which develops in an industry is, I think, borne of getting tired of using the same descriptive phrases for too long. The creative individual looks for new ways to say things to avoid repetitive cliches. The choices made sometimes are...unfortunate.

Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk

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I can dig that. Different tasks require distinct and different skills. But I fail to see how adding “set” or “set of” contributes anything meaningful. We could refer to your project organization skills and your data analysis skills without a “set” in sight.

And then there's the question of *why* people use such trite phrases when the language -- any language -- fairly bristles with expressive words. I was listening to a ballgame the other night and the announcers kept saying things like "fly ball to left field" or "pops it up" over and over again. Now, there's nothing wrong with such basic descriptive phrases, but they don't actually tell you all that much. So why don't these broadcasters use more elaborate language -- it's not like their predecessors didn't. I can pull up archived broadcasts right now by the likes of Red Barber or Vin Scully or Ned Martin and log dozens of different ways of describing the act of hitting a fly ball -- "skies," "poles," "hoists," "lofts," "launches," and on and on and on. I think the difference is that today's broadcasters just don't have the active vocabularies that these earlier announcers did. You can't really blame people for not speaking a form of language they don't know -- but still, it's a sign something isn't quite right with the way we use words.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. There's actually hard research demonstrating that the American vocubulary has diminished sharply over the past forty years or so -- see, for example, this journal article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289618302198

Now, I know there are going to be people who'll say "that's our modern education system for you, time to get back to the three R's, start reading books, etc. etc. etc." Well, that might be the glib, internet-echo-chamber-safe reply -- but consider this fact: people in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the generation that produced those well-spoken baseball announcers I mentioned above, actually read very little. Repeated surveys by both publishing companies and academics over that period kept producing the same result: the overwhelming majority of Americans never read anything more than a daily newspaper and possibly a couple of mass-circulation magazines. The majority of Americans in the Era did not buy books, or even *read* books -- and those who did seldom read any books more sophisticated than a murder mystery or a romance novel. Nearly all the "serious" books published in the Era were read only by a small subset of the educated urban population. And yet the mainstream public was still able to use a more advanced vocabulary than most people have today -- at a time when, thanks to the Internet, there is far more reading going on than there was then.

Is it de-evolution in action? Is it the notorious American tendency toward anti-intellectualism and not wanting to be seen as an "egghead?" Is it the Boys From Marketing and seventy years' worth of simplistic, repetitious television writing? Is it reversible? I don't know. All I know is you can't deny that it's happening.

^^^^
Might it be that today’s radio broadcast teams were weaned on television, a medium that asks less of its consumers’ imaginations? And of the announcers’?

As to football ...

I’m more amused than annoyed by so many in that game who use “football” itself in such redundant ways. “It’s what we do on the football field come Sunday that matters.” “That was a great football play.” “The guys on the other side of the football are a good football team.”

Funny this should come up; my dad was just watching a sports event of some stripe, and the announcer said something like, "He's one step closer to VICTORY!" And, a minute later: "Now just five points away from VICTORY!" And I thought, "Stop saying 'VICTORY!"

I once took part in a analytical paper that examined the difference between jargon, buzzwords, and slang within particular communities. To generalize, jargon and slang develop organically within communities and indicate one's membership of that community. The difference between the two is that jargon serves as a practical shorthand that deals with ideas, tools, techniques, and situations particular to that community. Slang on the other hand is most often used to identify something 'not of the community but with which we have to deal with'. Both slang and jargon often portray a dark humor and can be offensive to those outside the community. This in turn often adds to their bonding effect on community members. This is particularly true in communities that are involved in stressful 'life on the edge' situations, i.e. medicine, law enforcement, military, factory work, mining, logging, and commercial fishing. Slang and jargon exist because they describe something that exists to that community. Attempts to eradicate the use of a particular word or phrase usually fail because the item described continues to exist and another word or phrase will evolve to replace it. Buzzwords are a bit more complicated to define as they can be used for multiple and indistinct purposes. To generalize, buzzwords come from outside particular communities, deal with ideology and organization, and are used to imply meaning and superiority within the community. There was a lot more but that is the gist of what we determined.

tonyb said:

^^^^^
I have a silverware set, too, the pieces related to one another, for the goal of accomplishing the specific task of eating dinner. But I just call it silverware.

It’s safe to assume that when we speak of a person’s skills in an employment context, we aren’t concerning ourselves with his ability to tie his shoelaces or operate the dishwasher.*

*Unless the person is a shoe salesman, or a dishwasher.

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Okay, I guess I just don't let stuff like this bother me, unless the meaning is completely wrong, such as 'I could care less,' mentioned above, which essentially means that you do care, so why say it?

scottyrocks said:

Okay, I guess I just don't let stuff like this bother me, unless the meaning is completely wrong, such as 'I could care less,' mentioned above, which essentially means that you do care, so why say it?

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It ain’t that I’m losing sleep over it, but in a thread asking for annoying phrases, it seems worthy of mention.

One of the annoying corporate phrases that has become a plague here, leaking out into everyday speech, is "going forward". It drives me nuts hearing it. People don't say, "Next, we'll do this . . . " or "in future . . ." Instead, it's "Going forward . . . "

scottyrocks said:

Okay, I guess I just don't let stuff like this bother me, unless the meaning is completely wrong, such as 'I could care less,' mentioned above, which essentially means that you do care, so why say it?

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Maybe if we all mentally fill in "As if" before the nonsensical phrase? I do seems to recall a time not too long ago when "Valspeak" (an affliction suffered by teenage girls in certain Los Angeles suburbs) , in which (the affliction, not the suburb), a young woman would exclaim, "As if!", when confronted with a disagreeable situation.

KILO NOVEMBER said:

Maybe if we all mentally fill in "As if" before the nonsensical phrase? I do seems to recall a time not too long ago when "Valspeak" (an affliction suffered by teenage girls in certain Los Angeles suburbs) , in which (the affliction, not the suburb), a young woman would exclaim, "As if!", when confronted with a disagreeable situation.

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I like that - 'As if I could care less!' haha

Benny Holiday said:

People don't say, "Next, we'll do this . . . " or "in future . . ." Instead, it's "Going forward . .

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Well we have to do something until "at the end of the day" so I guess we might as well be "going forward".

I have been through multiple management changes and sat through far too many meetings and trainings where buzzwords flew thick and fast.
My entirely unscientific observation is simply this. The lower on the competence scale you are and the higher that you have climbed on the Peter principle ladder, the more highly developed your buzzword vocabulary becomes. A low buzzword vocabulary seems to correlate with people who have a general ability to get s*#t done.