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Words which set your teeth on edge

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10:37 / 14.09.04

Non-Americans pronouncing Con-tro-versy as Con-trov-esy. It's just fucking annoying.

10:47 / 14.09.04

tightie whities
Gnaaargh! Worse than 'knickers'; worse than 'panties'.

I hate that as well, but I thought it was a brand name?

Oh yeah! Nap. I fucking HATE that word and it should never, EVER be be used by adults to describe their sleeping habits. EVER.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:40 / 14.09.04

What the fuck? 'Nap'? 'More-ish'? Dude, you need help. Fight the real enemy.

12:21 / 14.09.04

Only a few others spring to mind now that 'energy', 'going forward', 'other half' and dodgy progressive presents have been taken...

To action. I planned to mention this one earlier, but I never got round to actioning it.

Pre-booking. Everything needs to be pre-booked these days. Must be to stem a rising tide of people booking things retrospectively or something.

Little boys' room. An adult who asks for directions to this is asking for a kick in the la-las.

Luv. The valedictory equivalent of dotting your 'i's with circles.

But those are more objections to usage than words that set my teeth on edge. I'm sure there are lots of those but I'm struggling to think of them. One that occurs is Sheath. Just something about the proximity of the sh sound to the th sound. Ugly ugly ugly. Sheaths, even worse.

12:34 / 14.09.04

Wulf:
Non-Americans pronouncing Con-tro-versy as Con-trov-esy. It's just fucking annoying.
This is one of many examples of you guys sticking the stress on the first syllable when no-one else does. For example, Ice Cream. You go for _Ice_ Cream, we have Ice _Cream_.

Lilly Nowhere Late

12:55 / 14.09.04

Nappy is pretty fucking awful. They are diapers. "Nappy" is how one describes someone's hair being really really really nasty, as in loaded with lice or something. I do not put "nappies" on my child. Especially since she is recently toilet trained. (i almost said potty-trained)
Would you put cloths filled with lice on a child? (i know, some of you are bursting to scream YES!)
I used to have a very difficult time saying "toilet" as in "where is the ----". I've adjusted to that eventually, but we ill speaking amerikans just do not say toilet, especially to strangers.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:15 / 14.09.04

This thread is grebt. Here are some words I don't like:

bonjour: why not just say hello, you stupid frogs!

drei: I think the word you're looking for is "three", Fritz!

cerveza: it's called a BEER, dego!

Woohoo! Pointful.

13:15 / 14.09.04

i used to think diaper was just some silly american word, but no, the cloth is woven in a certain diamond-like pattern to better catch the poo, so 'dia'per. wow.

don't know how nappy means lice ridden - is it like a refugee thing (used to be a hiphop band called the nappyheads, part of whose thing was being haitian refugees if i remember right)?

and moreish is one of those fake words that should be made a real word quicksmart, because it's needed. it's frankly not possible to desribe a digestive biscuit without it.

13:20 / 14.09.04

Grebt.

I fucking hate that.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:01 / 14.09.04

How do you feel about teh suck and lame0r?

15:07 / 14.09.04

They're grebt. Obviously.

15:37 / 14.09.04

This is one of many examples of you guys sticking the stress on the first syllable when no-one else does. For example, Ice Cream. You go for _Ice_ Cream, we have Ice _Cream_.

Er, no. Is this a Dick van Dyke thing?

16:27 / 14.09.04

What the fuck? 'Nap'? 'More-ish'? Dude, you need help. Fight the real enemy.

Whatever.

16:37 / 14.09.04

jammies
For pyjamas.

*shudder*

16:56 / 14.09.04

"Nappy", as applied to hair, technically means in small tight curls, fuzzy, or frizzy. Generally applied to short hair with a coarse, frizzly texture.

This is derived from the noun "nap", a soft or fuzzy surface on leather or fabric, as follows:

[OE. noppe, AS. hnoppa; akin to D. nop, Dan. noppe, LG. nobbe.] 1. Woolly or villous surface of felt, cloth, plants, etc.; an external covering of down, of short fine hairs or fibers forming part of the substance of anything, and lying smoothly in one direction; the pile; -- as, the nap of cotton flannel or of broadcloth.

2. pl. The loops which are cut to make the pile, in velvet.

Frankly, I think the "dirty smelly lice-ridden" connotation is a racist corruption, since "nappy" was once commonly applied to the texture of close-cropped African hair. Because, of course, Africans are dirty, smelly and have lice in their hair. (*sigh*)

NOT saying that you're racist, Lilly! It's a common application of the term... but I'm afraid that's probably its ultimate derivation.

Kind of a sad descent for a previously useful word.

D Terminator XXXIII

17:35 / 14.09.04

To video. Videoing.

Not much gets at me - but when fullgrown adults start describing how they videoed something, I pretty much want to do not much else but shit in their mouths.

Do you see?

D Terminator XXXIII

17:36 / 14.09.04

Do you see?

GROKK!

18:34 / 14.09.04

Moist is quite unappetizing, I think, which is why I'm always quite distressed to find brownies or cookies described this way. Just the combination of sounds in that word give it a horrible connotation in my head. Seems like it would only be properly used in a phrase like "What the hell? Why is this ______ moist?!"

Also, I've never understood fuckin' A. What's the "A" stand for, "ass"? So if you have the phrase "fuckin' ass," why d'you censor the less naughty word out of the two?

18:41 / 14.09.04

I don't see. Why do you hate it, Will? What do you prefer?

18:50 / 14.09.04

Someone mentioned tabloid speak a while back.... I don't mind neologisms liked "videoed". I understand the pendant's corner take on such things but real people in real situations use such words validly. However. Have you ever known a person who was not gainfully employed as the writer of tabloid headlines to use the word "tot"? As in CHILD. Or infant. Or baby. Or toddler...or any fucking thing other than tot. As someone with a relative who has been long involved in that old sub editing lark I understand the whole need to save space. But fucking hell, I just hate it. I hate it. Tinfoil on the teeth, nails down the blackboard, biting a peice of wool - that's the feeling that evil word imparts.

Lilly Nowhere Late

19:51 / 14.09.04

O no, you might be right about the racist connotations of the whole "nappy head" thing. I never thought about it that way, honestly, but it was a common kind of term used when I was in school, and mostly refering to sort of poor white kids who never got their weekly bath and hair washing; then, later I always recall hearing homeless people with icky hair and nappy together; still later, my friends with dreadlocks; most recently, irritating kids using it to define anything ugly or repulsive. Saying all that, I did grow up just north of the "deep south" where these kind of words get absorbed into everyday language by everyone and we're all just ignorant of their origins.
So, at any rate, it's not a great word for diapers is my main point, and now, I will not ever say it for meaning anything at all. It is a banned word.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:58 / 14.09.04

romp, on a similar tip to tot, for "have sex". Fuckaaaaghs.

20:25 / 14.09.04

A "tot" is a small child rolled in crumbly potato bits and deep fried.

"Tyke" is a similarly tabloidized word, but I like it because it makes me think of 1920s advertising.

This whole thread was redeemed by Haus, because he used the word "zymurgy," which is a brilliant, beautiful word. (I'm trying to work it into a "Health Encyclopedia: A-Z" feature right now. Something about nutritional yeast and vitamins in beer, I think.)

I've only ever heard "nappy" used for hair which was not quite dreadlocked but almost -- coily, uncombed curls. The phrase "nappy-assed weave" features in NWA's "Boyz in the Hood" in this sense, although because hair that is nappy was considered unfashionable & kind of low class at the time, it kind of became used poetically for any undesirable hair, I guess.

That "'erb" thing gets me, too. It's one of the few, what, colonialisms? that I can point to in my own speech. I'm pretty sure I talk with an American accent (although an ex-girlfriend once spent an evening training me to say "stereo" in the way she thought was correct), but the "herb" thing I get straight from my South African parents.

"Orientate" just sounds wrong to me. There's another "-ate" construction out there but it's slipping away from me. Damn. How did the direction/region (the East) relate to the verb? Something to do with the position of the sun? Why wasn't the Northern Hemisphere the "Orient"?

I have a spelling thing that always gets me, irrationally: hippy for "hippie." To me, "hippy" should be a modifier -- he looks hippy in those jodhpurs -- while the "-ie" should be the person. I don't have the same degree of reaction to junky, but I think reading old W.S. Burroughs had something to do with that. It still seems like it should describe an attic or an old car rather than a person.

Four things I have to capitalize at work that never fail to annoy me: the Moon, the Sun, Internet, and Web(space)site. I hate that style.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

21:13 / 14.09.04

Forgive me if I'm covering old ground here; I'm sure I've read the whole thread but I'm too drunk to know for sure.

'Nappy' is surely dependant on its geographical context. The word 'diaper' is never used in the UK, indeed TV adverts proport the relative merits of nappies and never once mention the 'd' word.

Someone (fuck knows who) once said that the UK and the USA are two countries separated by a common language and I reckon that this is a definite case in point.

Let's just agree to disagree (which is definitely one phrase that gets my hackles up)!

21:56 / 14.09.04

"Proactive." Why won't it die?
"Numpty." It says more about the user than the individual they are trying to demean.

If you use either of these words at work in front of me I will snatch that Pret a Manger fork out of your inept hand, disembowel you with it and fax your intestines to head office. I will make the fax machine produce a report of its last call on your scrotum and then I will phone them "to check they've received it." Then you will realise that neither the fax machine nor the people at the other end mind working for anyone else but you. Idiot.

Ooh, sorry, wrong thread, I think.

(Diaper is used in the UK to describe e.g. the decorative diamond patterns sometimes built into brick walls.)

22:51 / 14.09.04

Also, I've never understood fuckin' A.

fuckin a-firmative, perhaps?
its how ive always understood the phrase.

00:58 / 15.09.04

What does "Numpty" mean?

07:27 / 15.09.04

Numpty is Humpty Dumpty's dreadlocked son.

12:34 / 15.09.04

Re: diaper

Interestingly (to me, anyway, and that should be enough for anyone) the surname Diaper, which is relatively common in Southampton, is thought to be a conflamblement of de Ypres, meaning 'of Ypres', because lots of French and Flemish fishermen settled in Southampton. As every skoolchild kno, Ypres was historically famous for making high quality cloth, and napkins in particular. Nappy, of course, comes from napkin. So napkins 'de Ypres' would've been the best to have. Um, hence diaper, for nappy.

12:44 / 15.09.04

Wow, like the famous blue cloth from Nimes. Frankly, when foul smelling Limpopo coloured toxic sludge has squirted up the waistband of the thing coating the inside of the babygrow, and the baby is wriggling and trying to smear himself with shit, and is clearly mocking my efforts I couldn't give a damn what you call the things. A rose by any other name and all that.

Suavemente, Sheath was my most persistent nickname at school and I also hate the word.

Cube, last Autumn I had my chimney swept by a man whose father and grandfather before him had been chimney sweeps. He pronounced it "chimbley."

13:04 / 15.09.04

sub club cube:

"For example, Ice Cream. You go for _Ice_ Cream, we have Ice _Cream_"

Putting the stress on cream suggests that there are other words that could appear after the ice, which is absurd. Ice beef? Ice cheese? Ice ice baby? If you look at it that way, then it makes sense to put the stress on ice, thereby suggesting that there are other sorts of cream, because there are - clotted cream, single cream, whipped cream etc. Of course, it goes tits-up there, because when Brits say any of the latter they tend to put the stress on cream. Buh.

13:09 / 15.09.04

last Autumn I had my chimney swept by a man whose father and grandfather before him had been chimney sweeps. He pronounced it "chimbley."

I usually pronounce that "rough trade anal sex".

13:31 / 15.09.04

Rough trade? This was a respectable family firm that had been sexing South London anuses for 3 generations.

13:37 / 15.09.04

"I 'ad that Morrissey in the back of 'is arse, the other week..."

13:41 / 15.09.04

Putting the stress on cream suggests that there are other words that could appear after the ice, which is absurd

Ah, but that's the fun of it. I've got into the habit of emphasising the 'wrong' words, for comic effect. What started as a private joke about The Phantom Menace has spiralled out of my control to the point that I can't help saying, for example, orange juice, in everyday circumstances. It's just funnier that way, somehow. Try it youself...

Anyway, back to the thread: Mullered smacks of boastful laddishness and just makes me think of yoghurts. And drunk twats. In fact, I never use words like wankered, plastered, paralytic, arseholed etc. What's wrong with "I was very drunk"? It's much more dignified...

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