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This thread reminds me of the annual list of forbidden words and phrases that Matt Groening comes up with for his "Life in Hell" strip, if he's still doing it (and, yes, "in hell" made the list several years ago). Really, they're a sign of conversational laziness, but trying to quit using them is like trying to quit smoking: you start out with the best of intentions, but they're so convenient, and surely one more won't hurt; you know, it's all good, know-what-I'm-sayin', word. It's also easy to slip into the realm of the overly-contrived phrase, particularly with the "clever" variation on an epithet that someone mentioned earlier--Jesus Initial Surname, as in "Jesus H. Presley at the MGM Grand." (Just made it up--can you tell?) The only one of that genre that I've actually used in conversation was "Jesus, Mary and Bullwinkel!" I'd been waiting to unleash it for some time, but it went over like a lead balloon. So much for that.
My conversational vice isn't even a word or phrase, it's using my fingers to indicate double-quotes: both hands in the peace sign/V-for-victory configuration a la Richard Nixon, then curling the extended fingers so that they're like a brace of bunny rabbits whose ears are drooping on cue. (I wonder if the British use only the index fingers, if they do it at all.) Do it once at the beginning of the phrase that's being explicitly couched in irony, then again at the end, even though that really produces double-barrelled double-quotes, a no-no in any country. For some reason, even though I seemed to get along quite well before I picked it up, there are still very rare occasions when I use it because it's just so convenient. |
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