And other equally irritating phrases.
I was directed, the other day, to John Rentoul’s round up of banned expressions. A splendid celebration of the cliche, the slackardly sayings and the downright nasty newspeak – the kind of phrases that induce indigestion.
His streaming heap includes “scalable”, “baby steps” and “scientifically proven”.
To his linguistic gravy lumps, I’d like to suggest some additions. These are words and phrases the have irked me to the point of twitching, wincing and muttering swear words.
Iteration. What’s wrong with version, update, repetition?
Reaching out. As in “thanks for reaching out with that offer that I am not the slightest bit interested in” – frankly I’d rather be told “bugger off, I don’t care”.
Viral. To refer to a successful marketing campaign rather than a kind of infection. I hope for treatment soon.
Hashtag. Spoken aloud for emphasis and comic effect. It’s rubbish, we might as well say all punctuation exclamation mark. It took over after the dot-com bubble burst.
So-so so. I’m so so so fed up with this one.
Pulling together. Not, in fact, what a tug o’ war team does, but what people who work in offices do.
Methinks. And other mock olde worlde nonsense uttered by the kind of adults who play Minecraft.
Deliver. When done by anyone other than a midwife or postie.
Pre-plan, pre-order, pre-prepare and pre-packed. Makes me so cross, it could bring on an emptive strike.
(Thanks to Mike Ritchie for the Rentoul link)