That techno pseudo jargon reminds me of the phrases we'd typically hear on laddering calls when we were trying to force rank employees for promotions and annual ratings:
"He really knocked it out of the park."
"He's a real rock star."
"I can't say enough good things about her."
"She excelled in her role."
None give you any tangible data to compare to others and were just empty platitudes.
"There can BE only one."
Last edited by Rich; 11-01-2018 at 01:42 PM.
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016
Perhaps it has already been mentioned, but I would go to court over the most unnecessary BS word widely used today, and that is "incentivize." The word incent already exists, and performs the same task.
It's like taking the verb walk, and changing it to walkerize...totally pointless. For years people have incented other people to do things, now they have to incentivize them?
Have we covered "assuage" and "hitherto" as most hated words? Turns out, I was pronouncing them wrong for years -- more like decades -- 'cuz my only exposure was in the printed word. I did get some funny looks.
I should also bring up Audi and Acura. I bought the former when they were first introduced in the US of A in 1971 and referred to the car as an "AWE-dee." Took at least a year to get the right pronunciation, which I believe is "OW-dee." Similarly, I bought the first of several Acuras in 1988. Had the darnedest time getting that word right too. Kept saying "ah-CURE-ah," instead of "ACK-you-rah." Now that I think about it, maybe I am still saying these words wrong, although I like the words (and cars) just fine.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
While Verizon seems ubiquitous (another great word!) these days, I remember first seeing (and not hearing) advertising in 2000 when it was first launched. Without hearing the name I started calling it "VERY-zon". That was short lived as we were all soon bombarded with TV ads with the correct pronunciation.
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016
Bowl eligible, I like that...
Shambolic. Nice.
Clemsoning has a nice ring (though we're too good for a loss to us be considered Clemsoning, in my opinion). But that won't stop others from using it!
Jumping in late so apologies if these words have already been covered. Good writers are playing with fire IMO if they use either "jejune" or "concatenate". I will tolerate the latter, actually it's a word I quite like. But there's not a writer in the world who has the poetic license to use jejune. It just never works IMO. It's disruptive, it's jarring and it makes me retch. It's not that it's the height of literary snobbishness--I just don't think it can be used effectively*
Last edited by CameronBlue; 11-19-2018 at 07:15 AM. Reason: * Unless you desire to be known as the Don Rickles of your literary peers.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
Y'all will get a kick out of definitions 2 and 3:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jejune
Hilarious, I've never seen Love and Death, brilliant. When I was an editor I had a guest contributor turn in a literary review in which he used "jejune". Oh, god...I couldn't bear it. The only reason I let it go was because he was a brilliant writer otherwise, a Princeton grad, just a sweet, unpretentious guy, and it was a literary review after all. Moreover he was battling a crippling bi-polar condition which had left him exposed and vulnerable to the slightest criticism.
Last edited by CameronBlue; 11-20-2018 at 09:08 AM.