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Actually

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23:52 / 22.05.03

Ever find yourself locked into a horrendous nightmare where practically every sentence you write or utter is larded with a word which you cannot stop using, no matter how hard you try?

I'm sure this is quite common, actually. Every bloody post I've made today has the word 'actually' in it (and actually I'm sure that's been the case for sodding weeks). Actually, it's rather like a revolting self-reproducing organism, isn't it - every time you use the blasted word, it replicates itself in your brain, ready to pop out and onto the page/screen, or out of your mouth. It's also like a hideous reflex as well, which you enact outside the processes of your will.

Actually I think I'll just go and have a lie down.

Tryphena Absent

00:05 / 23.05.03

Yes and the words are important and women. I managed to write three separate essays with women recurring steadily in every paragraph. Strangely the only substitute for such a common word is female. It was nothing short of horrifying. Not as extreme perhaps but still quite ridiculous.

I find that I read a sentence back to myself and then, when writing the next, manage to use at least one word from the last because its at the top of my brain. Yuk. Still I don't care because all coursework is finished now. Hahahahaha (relieved rather than mocking laugh).

Less searchable M0rd4nt

00:47 / 23.05.03

"sigil"
"meme"
"hinge".

06:25 / 23.05.03

I use the word 'though' quite a lot, largely due to an irritating habit I have of qualifying almost everything I say. I'll try harder not to do so in future because it annoys the fuck out of me, let alone everyone else.

07:52 / 23.05.03

I used to use the word however too much. However I use it much less these days.

Ninjas make great pets

09:09 / 23.05.03

dont [obey] be silly [obey] you have [obey] complete contol [obey] over evrything [obey] you say [obey] or write [obey] or think.. [obey] dont let [obey] this silly [obey] word thing [obey] worry you [obey] ..

heh.
sorry.

11:21 / 23.05.03

Actually, I reckon I probably over-use so many words and phrases that I imagine I could be replaced by a simple program knocked up by a 12 yr old on a ZX Spectrum.

See also: really, thing, sort of, although and 'can't be arsed'

Andrew C*** passing himself of as Haus

11:24 / 23.05.03

I know what you mean, 'dude.'

14:02 / 23.05.03

more than once i have looked over a post i've just written here and taken about half of the "anyways" (or anyway) out of it before clicking post reply.

The Return Of Rothkoid

07:15 / 24.05.03

"Fuck" or any of its derivatives.

As anyone who's ever received an email from me will attest.

09:17 / 24.05.03

Innit. And I am fully in the grip of the dude meme, dude.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

13:35 / 24.05.03

I don’t say it, but hearing the word “basically” in every sentence is the auditory equivalent to chewing wool.

However Fuck/fack and cunt/cant seem to be increasingly prevalent in my speech. Probably due to the guys at work, whose favourite saying seems to be “Fackin cant”. Another word slipping in to my vocab is “nippy”, as in aggressive/piss taker. But I don’t mind this too much.

Dances with Gophers

18:07 / 24.05.03

That is spooky Panarchy cos basically (sorry!) I am going to write about that word and I do stress that it a coincidence.

A few months ago I was teaching a new colleague how to to use this monster of an access database (that just keeps growing as if its some kind of virtual triffid) and it slowly dawned on me that I was starting every sentence with that word (which I won't mention again!) but I could not stop myself. It was very annoying!

20:22 / 24.05.03

"Honestly!" and "For heaven's sake!" and "I'm afraid (insert quasiunpleasant statement here)". They make me sound frazzled when I'm pissed off, and for some reason the people around me have decided that I'm amusing when I'm frazzled or pissed off. To quote the Buffy, "Blah blah blah I'm so stuffy give me a scone."

13:53 / 25.05.03

man.

totally, dude.

i mean, obviously, y'know?

like, unfortunately, but still.

wait... aye, basically. aye.

13:54 / 25.05.03

seriously.

01:32 / 26.05.03

"Be that as it may" as an opener when disagreeing with someone. Every single time.

'S gotten so bad that I can't counter people's points anymore as any argument is lost in my opponent's mocking chant of, "Be that as it may! Be that as it may!"

07:43 / 26.05.03

I had escaped the tyranny of "dude," but now it's back. At least I don't say "My B" as often as I used to...

09:09 / 26.05.03

I must be one of the few who has the mental addiction to saying 'like' multiple times in a descriptive sentence.

ie. so like it was ok, but like I couldn't understand that.

09:39 / 26.05.03

I always tend to run out of words to express the savagery or unfairness of a situation, and so have long over-used some of these words, like "brutal" and "brutalising".
I also tend to over-use a lot of local Glasgow idiom (where I live) to fucking pad-out almost everything I say. I often find myself saying "wiiiit!" (as in 'what!' or to express disbelief), as well as "pure" before every other adjective. It's pathetic.

09:43 / 26.05.03

'Excuse me' when I'm angry with someone. Basically as a way of trying to present some surface facade of politeness before being incredibly rude and nasty to someone, i.e 'Excuse me, but would you please shut the fuck up/get the fuck out of my way/stop asking stupid questions/kindly cease to exist?' etc. In much the same way that people in the millitary will say 'with all due respect' before disrespecting their superiors, and scotsmen will often call you 'pal' just before laying the nut on you.

Other words/phrases in this vein which I have observed:

'I'm not trying to be funny but...' translation: 'I am about to say something which you will almost certainly regard as a diabolical liberty, and am trying to cover my arse with this pointless verbal negligee of respectability, in the hope that you will not rip my head off and shove it up said anal cavity.'

'I think what you're trying to say is...' trans. 'I have no idea what you're trying to say, but am going to answer the question I thought of instead, which is better.

'Look, mate/pal/son/buddy/other synonym of 'friend'...' trans. 'I consider you a wanker and am about to hit you with a large object, which may well be your own arm, unless you fuck off now.
There are many more I could probably think of, but I'm a bit bored now. Anyone else want to suggest some?

09:46 / 26.05.03

Oh yeah, the other thing that gets me about the language is swearing which defies all logic, i.e. :

This shit's a piece of piss. Well, it can't be both, can it? It has to be one or the other...

And on a related note, my all-time favourite piece of no-logic swearing:

That cunt's a fuckin' prick.

What? Are you talking about some transsexual?

10:48 / 26.05.03

On the subject of grammatically illogical swearing, former landlady of a pub I used to work in, when annoyed about an innocuous request that someone else had made (ie taking the night off or something similar, can't remember): "I dont mind being taking for a cunt, but I won't be taken for fucking cunt"

A certain quality was added to this by the fact she was a)drunk b)scottish c) about to sack someone.

11:52 / 26.05.03

mr the vandal;

dont you see those words as not actually meaning faeces, vagina or penis? i know i certainly do.

when you say "what a prick" it conjours up a mental image of a person with certain vague prickish characteristics, and not a giant penis with legs.

shit is one i am always using to mean stuff, which gets some folks backs up when you tell them to get their shit and chuck it in the van, say. "its not shit, and if you chuck it i'll kill you" and the like.

17:28 / 26.05.03

What I'm saying here is not that the swearing is actually illogical, toks, just that it's grammatically illogical, i.e. something cannot be, at the same time, a piece of shit and a piece of piss (except maybe that last Madonna movie), something cannot be both a cunt and a prick, etc. Christ, if I was so anal as to actually misunderstand what it all meant, then I'd forever be looking around saying 'Where? when people said 'Jesus Christ!' or 'I'd rather not, thank you very much,' when people shout 'Fuck!'

It just sort of strikes me as somewhat odd, this grammatically-incorrect swearing, and an interesting feature of language.

Oh, and on the subject of words overused, 'gainsay' which I seem to be saying and using quite a lot really, I suspect because I have an essay on Thinking Skills to write this week. 'While the positive effect of the use of the Six Thinking Hats in most situations cannot be gainsayed...' etc. Gainsay. Gainsay, gainsay, gainsay. What a magnificent word.

Anyone got any idea where it comes from?

17:54 / 26.05.03

Imported to English with the Angles and Saxons, apparently, according to Bartleby.

Etymology: Middle English gainsayen : gain-, against (from Old English gegn-) + sayen, to say (from Old English secgan; see say).

I cringe whenever the words "To be honest" come out of my mouth. If I heard someone else say that, I'd immediately expect a lie to follow and it's such a superfluous phrase.

Having recently been subject to a visit from Mama Xoc, I am extremely conscious of some annoying verbal tics of hers that I also use. Saying "So" with great import to break a silence and everybody waits for the next thought to be announced.

So... There's the Scottish thing of seeing a large thing and pronouncing it "huge big". Entirely tautologous and a bit infantile but I say it regularly, then wince. And the corollary: "toty wee".
Ganesh has a huge big trunk. That's a toty wee mouse.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:57 / 26.05.03

Middle English - "gain" meaning "against". Before that, I think, Old Norse - gegn.

I overuse "well, quite" *hideously*.

18:50 / 26.05.03

It's not a word nightmare for me, more of a comma one. I frequently write sentences which, if I left them alone would read a bit like, this, maybe, with all the comma's, all in the wrong, places. It leaves me sounding a bit breathy if I don't go back and remove them. And stupid.

10:02 / 27.05.03

And: colons. Also, their slightly retarded brethren, the semi-colons; I tend to use these willy-nilly, and I often have this nagging thought: there must be some simple grammatical rule for them; I've probably been told it, and I imagine it's easy to remember: and I'm fairly certain you really should only have one of each per sentence.

Am i wrong?

10:06 / 27.05.03

I have to consciously restrain myself from ending every single sentence with "..or something".

I guess it's to try and reinforce the point that everything I say/write is not a concrete statement of which I am certain / is a half-baked thought which I'm making up as I go along / is generally poorly expressed.

I also keep sticking those delete-as-applicable /'s into sentences far more than is healthy.

And joining-words-together-like-this far more than is strictly necessary.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:21 / 27.05.03

'Kinda' is my Linguistic Achilles Heel. Kinda. I used to have the piss taken out of me at school and still couldn't stop using it. I don't know why I keep using it, especially as my vocabulary isn't wide enough that I can always think of suitable objects/situations to compare to whatever the thing is that is currently under discussion.

11:27 / 27.05.03

I think that I am probably guilty of colon abuse; they tend to be rather useful (Argh! - oh and semi colons too).

I also rely a lot on contextualised subclauses!!!!!

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:13 / 27.05.03

What's a contextualised subclause, daddy?

I overuse "as it were", usually to offset having just said something truly unpleasant. Also "MacGyver".

I'm more disturbed personally by my involuntary reaction to other people's textual habits. For example on Barbelith, when somebody signs their name at the bottom of a post, especially when that name is absolutely identical to the name that appears to the left of what they have written in the *username* space, I have to recalibrate before I can remember their statement as anything other than a persistent farting noise, a couple of half-formed phonemes and the sound of the backs of two hands being ineptly slapped together. Fortunately, this is not always necessary.

13:40 / 27.05.03

Haus –

[I] I also rely a lot on contextualised subclauses!!!!! [/I] (Leap)

[b] What's a contextualised subclause, daddy? [/b]

That is when you use a subclause in a sentence (usually in brackets with an additional comment after a hyphen – the latter to contextualise the point before the hyphen).

Leap

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:53 / 27.05.03

See also "emoticons".

I suffer from a related disease, it being the convoluted subclause, where a subclause, although perfectly grammatically correct, expands outwards from the middle of the sentence like a beautiful flower until the subclause and the subject of the subclause, through a welter of relative constructions that do little to clarify the matter, take on a level of importance far beyond the original subject of the sentence, but I try not to let it get in the way of my work with the elderly.

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