Following my earlier column on the list of most irritating words compiled by the late, great Rod Liddle readers have been in touch with their own suggestions.
Craig nominated the word ‘absolutely’—and he is absolutely right.
Sheila drew my attention to the irritating repetition of ‘right’.
She says she once counted it used five times in one 30-second answer on a TV news show.
My response is that there is a baffling kind of fashion that seems to cover the words of affirmation.
A simple ‘yes’ is abandoned in favour of ‘absolutely’ (as Craig and other have pointed out); this then becomes ‘100%’, and then this in turn is replaced by a repeated muttered ‘right, right.’
Another reader, picking up on this same irritating habit, suggested a revival of the lovely old Sherlock Holmes word ‘indubitably.’
A nice idea, but (I fear) unlikely to catch on.
Philip is particularly irritated by the combination of the reflexive pronoun with another person’s name, as in ‘Mary and myself.’
Quite right!
Nothing wrong with ‘Mary and me’ in the objective case or ‘Mary and I’ in the subjective case.
Peter hates the use of the word ‘hike’ (as in ‘rate hike’)—a clumsy way of saying ‘increase.’
Di says the expressions that irritate her are: ‘would you like me to be perfectly honest?’ or ‘to be perfectly honest with you.’
Martin is irritated by ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’
Yes, a lie is a lie and doesn’t need to wear a multisyllabic mask.
Helen is annoyed by those sports commentators for whom everything is ‘iconic’, and the irritating journalistic overuse of ‘catastrophe.’
Matt sent a long and creative list, and I was especially interested in his observation that ‘community’ is now overused.
Laurie complains that everything goes ‘viral’ these days.
Chris hates it when people say, ‘I’m over it.’
Andrew is irritated by ‘asylum’ which he says is a place for lunatics, not refugees!
Dennis wants us to add to the list that political stupidity ‘moving forward.’
Paul wants to add ‘incredibly’—applied to things that are perfectly credible.
John doesn’t like ‘impact’ used as a verb.
Tracey finds the American expression ‘my bad’ totally irritating.
And my apologies to anyone whose ‘irritating’ nominations I have omitted—there were just so many I couldn’t fit them all in!
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