word aversion

[aroraborealis]

Do you have any word aversions?

I have one: "pit" (but only when describing holes or hole-like areas (armpit, tree pit, etc, not, say, when describing the stones in fruit).

Comments

It's all about the context

[drwex]

For example I loathe the use of the term "junk" to refer to mens' genitalia. If there's one part of my body that is not junk? It'd be that.

I dislike "irony/ironic" because they get used by people who wouldn't know irony if it bit them on the ass, which it usually does. Schadenfreude, now? That's an awesome word.

Unique is up on my hate list because people seem to have no idea what it means and thus produce phrases like "more unique". Conversely, sui generis is just awesome and is almost never used except it was used last night by an NPR reporter in describing Ted Kennedy and I liked that.

Re: It's all about the context

[dbang.livejournal.com]

I disagree vehemently (a great word) that someone who knows what the word "unique" means wouldn't "produce phrases like 'more unique'".

Re: It's all about the context

[drwex]

I agree that "vehement" is an excellent word in all its forms.

I'm given to understand that "unique" means "one of a kind" and that therefore it's a form of nonsense to claim that something is "more one-of-a-kind." It appears to be a confusion between "unique" and "unusual."

Am I missing something?

Re: It's all about the context

[dbang.livejournal.com]

You are missing that something can be unique on more axes than than something else.

All snowflakes are unique, but a snowflake with only five spurs instead of six would be uniquer, because it differs from all other snowflakes in more regards than "regular" unique snowflakes.

Re: It's all about the context

[drwex]

Oh, that's an interesting way to look at it. I'll claim that your inference is probably not what is meant by people who use that phrase because I think you're way smarter than the average, but it's still an interesting idea. Thanks!

Re: It's all about the context

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

Unique is up on my hate list because people seem to have no idea what it means

Unless you believe there is some magical place out in the ether where word meanings reside, this is a hard statement to support. A word means what people think it means. And it might upset you that the word no longer means what it used to and what you'd like it to mean, but, alas, unique has moved on. As has peruse. Language is a cruel mistress.

Re: It's all about the context

[drwex]

By the same token so has "junk" and any other word in common parlance.

I'm aware that Humpty Dumpty rules the day, but the question was about words that annoy me. And here and there some of the evolutions of language use annoy me. As noted above.

Re: It's all about the context

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

I know that the point was what words annoy and I'm not questioning the fact that the "u word" puts your teeth on edge since it's similar to how "plethora" annoys me in student papers. All I'm saying is that people's use of it can't be wrong if that's what people feel that it means.