Terms or phrases that make your skin crawl

[Tony2or4]

Tony2or4 said:

Sticks. said:

Tony2or4 said:

Johnnytheboy said:

Sticks. said:

Train station - it's a railway station.

Correct.

By that logic, should a bus station properly be called a road station?

It's English so doesn't need to be logical.

Yep, good point.

And yet... A lot of the suggestions on this thread are irritating to people precisely because they fly in the face of logic - such as nouns being used as verbs, or 'can I get...?'.

'Train station' is different: arguably it is logically correct, a station being a place where something stops and it's the train that's doing the stopping, not the railway.

But what seems to make 'train station' irritating is the fact that a fully-established phrase - 'railway station' - is now being changed for no good reason.


Another good example of this sort of thing is 'I'm good' rather than 'I'm well'. The latter ought to be the annoying one, 'well' being an adverb not an adjective - and yet this illogicality is so deeply-rooted into our language that we don't notice that there's anything wrong; and now that some folk are changing the phrase, we get irritated.

[DickyC]

Innit.

[smn159]

Hard working families

[Tony2or4]

Sticks. said:

Btw, harassed should be pronounced the same way as embarrassed.

Well, not in entirely the same way.

[twing]

"Can I take it for a spin?" aaaaaarrrrggghhhhh!

[El Guapo]

"Back in the day"

[Morningside]

Haven't a Scooby Doo.

[DickyC]

Morningside said:

Haven't a Scooby Doo.

Rhyming Slang Floodgates: Open.

[Tony2or4]

I get irritated by the use of the word 'certain', as in "The winner of the British Grand Prix was a certain Lewis Hamilton." - As though we're all supposed to pretend that we don't know the identity of the person in question.

[marshalla]

"visually see"

as opposed to orally see perhaps ?

[Tony2or4]

Oh yes, and here's one of my 'favourites':

The wow factor.

[Dr Jekyll]

Sticks. said:

Btw, harassed should be pronounced the same way as embarrassed.

+1

Pronouncing harassed to rhyme with crashed started as a humorous malapropism in the TV series "Some mothers do 'ave 'em". But bizarrely caught on.

[whoami]

Daily Fail/Wail etc.

Sorry about the Wail/Fail link, etc.

[mybrainhurts]

MATE and PAL.

...Sod off, you moron, I don't even know you.

[mybrainhurts]

CAN I GET a sausage sandwich?

Correct response is...yes, if you climb over the counter, but it would be easier if I gave it to you.

Aaaaa and, indeed, rgh....

[Tony2or4]

mybrainhurts said:

MATE and PAL.

...Sod off, you moron, I don't even know you.

+1

[marshalla]

mybrainhurts said:

MATE and PAL.

...Sod off, you moron, I don't even know you.

Calm down, chum.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

98elise said:

Its not called the bedroom tax. Its called that by Labour to make it sound like a tax on the poor, hence "so called".

Yeah yeah....you'll be telling us it wasn't actually called the Poll Tax next.

[mybrainhurts]

Ok, long story short...

Aargh....No, it isn't. No, it wasn't.

[mybrainhurts]

That's just £251,641.39, please

Oh...is that all?