Pee-ee-ee-vin’ (on a Monday Afternoon)

January 10, 2012, 12:01 am

Trolling around in the comments to one of my Lingua Franca posts a few weeks back, I came on one that said (in roughly these words), “I can never tell if Yagoda is peeving. He seems to be, but he always has plausible deniability.”

Well, yeah. When critical masses of people gravitate to a certain kind of verbal expression, or deviate from standard English in a particular way, I’m interested, first, in figuring out precisely what is happening and, second, in coming up with a hypothesis or two as to why. That’s what’s going on in my Lingua Franca pieces and in Not One-Off Britishisms, my blog about British expressions (like gone missing and gobsmacked) that have been taken up by Americans. I could care less—excuse me, couldn’t care less—if you say not that big of a deal or thanks for inviting my wife and I or everyone should bring their plate to the sink. In fact, it makes me happy because it represents some new live data. As far as inveighing against these developments, or even clucking my tongue about them, frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Except when I do.

I can’t deny, plausibly or otherwise, that some language things just start me peeving. At first blush, they would seem to comprise a rather disparate group, so I’m hoping by the end of this post to figure out some common thread(s). In no particular order, my teeth are set on edge by:

Dumb vogue abbreviations. The two that comes to mind are mic and Weds. First of all, what is so terrible about the tried-and-true mike and Wed.? I’m further offended by mic because it should be pronounced mick, and by Weds. because it adds a letter, because the letter is (seemingly randomly) plucked from later in the word, and because you don’t pronounce it the way it’s spelled.
Pronouncing negotiate as nego-see-ate and Social Security as Soh-sul Security. (I’m looking at you, Mitt Romney.) Why?
Saying or writing couple things instead of couple of things.
The bizarre popularity of archaic forms like oftentimes, amongst and whilst.
One-year anniversary instead of first anniversary.
One particular Britishism, used by one particular American publication. An example is when the otherwise excellent writer David Owen reminisced about “the first liquid paint I’d ever got to use.” This irks me so much that I started a Facebook group called “Get The New Yorker to use ‘gotten’ instead of ‘got.’”
People who address the lack of an epicene pronoun in English by going feminine: saying (in the above example), Everyone should bring her plate to the sink. Yes, I know his was used for centuries, and that is messed up, but replacing it with her makes you seem so darned pleased with yourself.
Jargon, especially business jargon. Whenever I hear the phrases going forward, reach out to, or best practices, I die a little inside.

I can see some commonalities in this list. I seem to care a lot about efficiency, offended as I am by the extra and seemingly unnecessary words or letters in Weds., amongst, and one-year anniversary. Logic appears to be a big thing for me as well, hence my annoyance at the apparently inexplicable popularity of mic and soh-sul. And I tend to peeve when language reflects pretentiousness, egotism, mindlessness, bullying, and/or the (unacknowledged) pushing of a political or social agenda.

That leaves couple things. I have to admit that it streamlines the original phrase and makes perfect sense. So why do I hate on it? There must be at least a couple reasons, but for the life of me, I can’t think of what they are.

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http://twitter.com/danfrakes Dan Frakes

It’s interesting that you’re offended by “Weds” because it adds a letter, and that letter is plucked from later in the word, yet you prefer “mike,” which adds *two* letters, one of which isn’t even in the word! (FWIW, mic is pretty much a standard in the audio world. Mike seems to be more popular among non-audio folks.)

Count me as one of those who says and writes “couple things”—at least when talking about two items on their own. I use “couple of” when referring to two items chosen from a larger group. For example, “I’d like a couple tacos, please” vs. “I’d like a couple of those dinner rolls.”

Fun list to read!

Guest

Good on you.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Cheryl-Thornett/1160262870 Cheryl Thornett

Hmm, perhaps Ithis would be a useful exercise for all of us. Why do some expressions have the effect of the proverbial fingernails on a blackboard while other apparently similar ones do not? And does this demonstrate anything about unconscious language or usage rules?

While we’re at it, though, can I ask when ‘hate on’ as opposed to ‘hate’ entered the language? Is it a regional variant? And does it have a different shade of meaning than ‘hate’? This is a genuine question, by the way, as ‘hate on’ is new to me.

11167504

“Hate on” means the same as “hate,” except with more intensity and specificity; it also implies a certain amount of jealousy. It derives from African-American Vernacular English and was coined some time before 2001, when Dr. Dre used it in “Forgot About Dre”:

Ya’ll know me still the same ol’ G
But I been low key
Hated on by most these niggas
Wit no cheese, no deals and no G’s, no wheels and no keys
No boats, no snowmobiles and no skis
Mad at me cause
I can finally afford to provide my family wit groceries.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Cheryl-Thornett/1160262870 Cheryl Thornett

Thank you.
Guest

Commentary machine intelligence won’t allow me to double “like” so I have to find another way to highlight my likes.

zimpenfish

“One-year anniversary instead of first anniversary”

It’s not the first anniversary though, it’s the “first year anniversary” if anything. Before that you’ve got “one month anniversary”, “three month anniversary”, “six month anniversary”, etc.

mbelvadi

Exactly what I was thinking. The rise of “one year anniversary” comes along with the increase in more formal (consumerist?) celebrations of first [something shorter than a year] anniversaries, the most obvious being, as zimpenfish says, first month.
Yes, you can argue the “anni”versary implies year, but that’s not popular usage anymore.

dank48

I’ll insist that “anniversary” be used only for multiples of years, not months or other units of time, forever. Well, anyway, as long as my salary is paid in sodium chloride.

Guest

Good luck with that.

jsibelius

I actually like “one-year anniversary,” etc. “First anniversary” sounds celebratory, where “one-year anniversary” sounds more like a memorial.

Guest

My guess is that your analysis is idiosyncratic. We could poll the jury?

wlreed1

I am most peeved (which is a transitive verb) by the popular misuse of ”relatable,” which I heard Brian Williams misuse on NBC’s evening news last night, without so much as a blush. It means “narratable,” something that can be related (transitive verb) or told to someone else. It does not mean, building on an earlier non-standard use of “relate to” to mean “feel sympathetic toward”– “what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed,” to enlist the frequently peeved Alexander Pope in support of my peevishness. I would liken these bits of pop-speak to viruses that infects the language for a while, rarely fatal and only treatable with large drafts of *The American Heritage Dictionary* and a red pencil.

Guest

Bits of pop-speak that infect the language like viruses? Sounds about right to me.

I can recommend to you Thomas Creswell’s book about how the American Heritage Dictionary was constructed and put inside washing machines to hasten the transmission of its prescriptivist point of view.

Guest

Thomas Creswell, Usage in Dictionaries and Dictionaries of Usage (Publications of the American Dialect Society Pads No 63 & 64) [Paperback]

dank48

“As far as” rather than “As far as . . . goes” or “As for” is a real pita.

Guest

A hollow sandwich made with unleavened bread?

sortaretired

I’m a biologist, and expressions such as “In the DNA of” drive me crazy. I know people are trying to find a new and clever way to describe something that is important or central, but “DNA” has a very specific meaning that shouldn’t be diluted, especially in a country where elected officials can discount the possibility of evolution without being laughed out of office.

scades

… which brings us to the almost always misused “quantum.” And then there’s “steep learning curve,” which any psychologist will say actually refers (on a graph of learning vs. time) to rapid learning.

mbelvadi

I’ll argue “steep learning curve” with you because I use the expression all the time, and visualize a graph of learning effort vs proficiency/effectiveness at a task, not learning vs. time, when I do so. Usually the context for me is comparing the usefulness of new library technologies (eg opacs, online boolean-based database systems) to the old systems (card catalogues, print indexes). The learning curve that is getting from novice to proficient user is much steeper for new technologies (the old ones basically required knowing alphabetical order) but the payoff is much more efficient and effective “search results”.

Guest

Literalizing a metaphor.

dank48

. . . and “to go ballistic,” always used for something exciting. A rocket goes ballistic when it has exhausted its propellant (or the propellant is shut off), and from then on behaves like any other object moving through space, subject to gravity and wind resistance.

Guest

Metaphor.

Guest

Is every metaphor a misuse of another literal expression?

mikegrubb

No, in the sense that metaphor is not a “misuse.” Metaphor is, however, inherently paradoxical, espousing an “is” in the context of an “is not.” The engendered spark of cognitive dissonance gives a true metaphor its bite. (And yes, I know that “bite” here is metaphorical.) Paul Ricoer’s *Rule of Metaphor* is a dense but useful treatment of the topic.

Guest

I like the substance of your comment and whole heartedly agree about the ignorance — scientific and historical — of our politicians; ……. however, when I say “X is in the DNA,” I mean it metaphorically. Usually I’m referencing a psychological trait or an ideological bent that really, truly could not possibly be part of the DNA in any meaningful sense but is so stand-out-ish it needs a little more umph, a punching up……

I see your objection, but raise you some fundamental understanding of what language is and how it works in all its metaphorical and literal complexity.

Surely our species specific urgency to claim the moral high ground on the cheap by dissing the verbal likes and dislikes of our putative superiors in the hierarchy is in the DNA.

vceross

1) At the end of the day
2) “Sort of,” injected into every sentence where one is actually attempting to impose her will (that “her” was for you, Ben Yagoda: I’m feeling pretty pretty pretty pleased about it).

11167504

Thank you, Larry David!

dcwhitney

Thanks, especially about going forward.
matt_roberts

I thought I was the only one who cringes at ‘reach out to.’ Whenever, I’m asked if I will reach out to someone during a meeting, I say ‘no, I’ll call/send an email.’

mbelvadi

hehe, the way some people seem to be black holes of communication, ‘reaching out’ can feel like the right metaphor, implying a desperate striving to connect without likelihood of success!

Guest

Exactly right, never knowing that their reaching out has already been chopped off at the wrist by accidental connection with a mystery taboo.

sicetnon

My biggest pet peeve is when writers use “to beg the question” when their intent is “to ask the question.” I suppose they think the former sounds more educated or elitist than the latter, in any case, it is so common as to go unnoticed by most readers. “To beg the question” is to assume as fact an unproven assertion, a very different process than to pose a question.

115thDream

This was going to be mine when I got to the bottom of the list…and you are probably right that we are so far gone we’ll never get this back for logic. Wait, maybe there aren’t any viciously circular arguments anymore, so we might not need it…

While we’re at it: turning more nouns to verbs. I’ve never gotten over (got over?) “impact,” and now “resource” is provoking me to physical outbursts.

dank48

You should get over “impact” as a verb. According to the OED, “impact” as a noun goes back at least to 1781, as an adjective, to 1563, and as a verb, to 1601. As a verb, “resource” goes back at least to 1917. Doubtless the same holds for “contact,” Nero Wolfe’s bete noire.

mbelvadi

You’re right technically, but stop and think for a moment about what “beg” means – why is your definition the meaning of the phrase? The “wrong” meaning actually makes a lot more sense, as a shortening of something like “logic begs the listener to ask the question”. I’m content to let this one flip meanings because the new meaning seems to make more sense to me than the old one, given the literal meanings of the words.

betterschool

Fun read. Thanks.

You may be underappreciating the role of context in your examples from the business community, especially in relation to your efficiency criterion.

– If you understand the meaning of “reach out to,” you understand that it is an efficient communication.

– “Best practices” is a borderline technical term, infused with considerable common meaning among business professionals. It is efficient when used by knowledgeable people.

– If one takes “going forward” as functionally identical to “from now on” (a common usage in academia), I fail to see inefficiency.

Since you raised the issue of superfluous words and unconventional allusion, how about: “I can’t deny, plausibly or otherwise, that some language things just start me peeving. At first blush, they would seem to comprise a rather disparate group, so I’m hoping by the end of this post to figure out some common thread(s). In no particular order, my teeth are set on edge by . . .”

Separately, and that said, I used to dislike both of these but I’m growing fond of their utility in certain cases.
staffnadjunct

I agree with the author, but would like to add my own
irritant to the discussion. Is anyone else bothered by “a myriad of”
as a replacement for “myriad” as an adjective? This drives me
CRAZY!
darthvader09

“Jargon, especially business jargon.” Yes! I heard a new one (for me) today. A company was talking about how they “flow the product” instead of “selling the merchandise.” I immediately thought of something other than merchandise.
22108469

At the top of my list: “Let’s grow the economy!”

Guest

This is annoying mostly because it doesn’t connect with reality. It’s language as ritual. Paul Krugman says if we can find some space aliens to trade with we can grow the economy; otherwise, we need a new way of thinking.

http://noradiofreelunch.blogspot.com/ Urk

As someone who spent more than a decade working sound in a variety of professional environments before going to grad school, I’m a little peeved that your peeving about “mic.” At least if I understand what’s being abbreviated here. And maybe I don’t, as I didn’t know that the term (as I use it) was particularly in vogue.

What’s being abbreviated here is either the word “microphone” or a phrase like “put a microphone in front of that, positioned in such a way so as to efficiently pick up the sound that is being emitted so I can make it louder.” Spelling it as ”mike” introduces a letter not in the original word and creates confusion with the name “Mike.” And, as far as being “tried and true,” “mic” has been used by people who actually work with microphones for decades and decades. In my experience, people who abbreviate microphone as “mike” are the same folks who are likely to pick up a live one and loudly thump it with their open hand while asking “is this thing on?” as the pop from their palm hitting the ball blows out all the speakers in the room.

betterschool

Your perspective adds to my post suggesting that the patina on Ben’s ivory is interfering with his vision. I was a ham operator as a teenager, then a performing musician. In both contexts, “mic” was and still is the correct term. The panels on aircraft have plugs for a “mic.” Ben appears to be unaware of the texture of constructs such as “best practice.” They are not denotatively empty terms. Several professional organizations, such as (http://asq.org), employ best practice methodology as part of their work on quality.

Guest

I liked both comment and response.

Guest

Good post. Like most attempts to “simplify” spelling, an important etymological clue gets sacrificed by changing the c to k, which then requires to the extra letter, silent e, to advertise the phonetic basis of the unnecessary change.

etenner

Given that language changes over time, I would still like to add the following to the list:

1. Using “For who” ( to who, etc.) instead of “For whom” (For Who the Bell Tolls?)
2. Using “I seen” instead of “I saw “*
3. Using “I is” instead of “I am”*

* Really, people, is conjugation that difficult??

jsibelius

Who/whom really is that difficult, which may explain why it’s used so rarely in practical speech. I agree with you on the others, but I suppose they depend on your primary influences.
Guest

“Is conjugation really that difficult?”

Not at all. It is an excellent way to determine social class for the purpose of ostracizing the unwashed. As for who and whom, the class-based origins of the significance is most usefully marked in hypercorrection– a preference for ‘whom’ regardless of case. A primary cause for case confusion with who/whom is its appearance out of normal order and in embedded clauses where its use within the clause is unclear. I used to tell students in choosing between who/whom to use who when it sounds natural and you will come off as an informal but comfortable and confident speaker. Use ‘whom’ incorrectly (hypercorrectly) and you’ll come off sounding like a total doofus.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-Marrou/100001026744729 Chris Marrou

I think “best practices” will have to stay because it has a legal existence as a description of what should be done in a business.

I spent 36 years as a TV anchor clipping a mike on my tie every weekday; it didn’t become a “mic” until I was close to retirement.

I must agree with Ben on “anniversary.” It’s gotten so bad it’s up to five-year and twenty-year anniversary now. I can’t wait until some TV anchor says, “Today marks the date of the twenty-year anniversary of…”
adin713

Verbification of adjectives and nouns, like: impactful, architected. Feh.

mbelvadi

I think you meant adjectivication of verbs, not the other way around, given your examples. Some would argue that this is a strength of English, that new words that native speakers feel are needed have this mechanism available to use. When people do this to create words when a good differently rooted one already exists, we end up with redundant words sometimes, but often this is used to create words we need. Consider: operate/operation/operationalize. Operationalize really means something different from operate.
Guest

It’s called back formation. Taking a word limited to one part of speech and expanding its meaning to assume the others. They will either join the lexicon seamlessly or disappear with hardly a ripple.

http://www.arrantpedantry.com Jonathon Owen

“The bizarre popularity of archaic forms . . .”

They can’t be that archaic if they’re popular, right?

Guest

Bingo. When obliged to notice his existence, I refer to my own erstwhile husband.

Guest

>replacing it with her makes you seemed so darned pleased with yourself>> + >So why do I hate on it?> We can assume sufficient self-awareness from Ben Yogada about his own introduction of a relatively new verbal oddity as a grace note on his peevin, right? It’s data. It’s language use in action, worthy of study in its own right, right?Take, like, the fellow who was “dissing ‘like’” in these pages just recently … I find these conversations so very dated and, well, odd. While I feel reasonably certain that Yagoda is joshing you at one level, I fear The Chronicle of Higher Education is, perhaps unwittingly, fertilizing the soil for a resurgence of grammatical mavenry. Y’all do know that generating a list of your own most hated shibboleths and imposing them on unwitting students does NOT count as language instruction, right?? It is, instead, unabashed nitwittery. I’d scold you like a bunch of kids whose language skills are impaired by ‘like’ and ‘you know,” but — like, you know, it would be counterproductive. Y’all recognize nitwittery when you see it, right?A subject we might study with some profit is the relationship between the psychological urge toward mavenry and the continuing hatred (really? hatred?) so many of our species feel toward randomly chosen locutions. Given that we are an hierarchical species, eager to take the moral highground on the cheap … is that all it is? [Mine is 'spouse.' I have always disliked that word. Long before I left my erstwhile husband, it just gives me the willies.]

vceross

I think you have no cause for concern. I’m guessing that most of us are aware of language’s continual evolution, and of the elitism of grammar, mechanics, and the bon mot, all of which are like table manners: something we impose because we have learned not to like it when people spew with their mouths open.

Guest

… or wield a fork with their left hand or use the table knife or a piece of bread to round up the peas… or when they ridicule our dearly loved but unsophisticated relatives.

vceross

….or be argumentative and rude at the dinner table, yes!

alabaster

Yes, “gotten” in some structures now sounds right, although my high school English teacher (many years ago!), Miss Craig, always told us that “gotten rhymes with rotten.”
elle82

Without question, my biggest irritant is the misuse of the word “literally.” I’ve heard linguists argue that the meaning of the word is changing, but it still drives me bananas when someone says something like, “that literally drives me bananas.”

mbelvadi

“Literally” may be worth fighting for, just because we don’t have a good synonym to switch to when it starts to mean its own opposite, at least that I can think of.
Guest

Ooops. See “tally me bananas” in response to johnalene above.
I have a, perhaps, surprisingly complicated take on “literally.” There is a trope (like a rhetorical figure, but having to do with meaning rather than the arrangement of words) … anyway, there is a trope in science fiction literature by which we literalize the figurative. When you begin reading an SF story, you should embrace with the assumption that every word is literally true until or unless the text convinces you of the contrary. A talented SF writer uses the trope to move you from the plane of the mundane to the unexpected. Samuel Delany first discussed the phenomenon either in _Starboard Wine_ or _The Jewel Hinged Jaw_. ”Her world exploded” is quite as likely to mean there was a woman who owned a planet and the planet blew up as to mean she was just having a bad day. David Hartwell articulates the standard position in his anthology _The Science Fiction Century_.Go to Lakoff and Johnson for the past history of cognitive linguistics and our current understanding of metaphor. The confusion of literal and figurative reveals not just “an error” but a tapping into a profound uncertainty about what is literal and what is figurative.Everything is more complicated than it at first appears. I apologize for what may sound like hectoring, but is really just a deep interest in the phenomenon.

johnalene

“I don’t exactly know” suggests that I approximately know, when it is likely that I haven’t any idea.

Also: each and every time I hear “each and every,” I wonder about “each but not every,” or perhaps vice versa.

Guest

“I don’t exactly know” means I may have a vague idea, but I’m not claiming expertise.

“Each and every,” like many offending phrases, is used for emphasis. Not only does each particular, meaning THIS particular, instance of X drive me to the tally man to tally me bananas, every recurrent instance drives me to the tally man to tally me bananas.

MarjoryMunson

I cringe when an announcer tells me to watch or listen to something at 8:00 a.m. in the morning – and my pet peeve when doing medical transcription was past history – AMA please note!

Guest

“History” is defined as the narrative of a patient’s medical journey. ”Past history” refers to a condition that appeared in the past. Perhaps it was resolved in the past, or perhaps it has recurred, in which case it is now present. To “take a history” or “take a complete history” is to establish the narrative in as much detail as possible in order to correlate present events with past events. To “make history” is to produce an event notable enough to get recorded in the complete narrative.

Jeez. I apologize. I sound like a mavenly school marm, but there’s often a very good reason for locutions that strike us as ungrammatical or redundant. One of the primary reasons is that the offending phrase is actually ambiguous (two distinct meanings: history = the past; history = the narrative) one of which is more common.

urbanexile

Like you, I never read the “Cat” movie any other way. The “broken ankle” was always symbolic to me of the “broken” penis. And clearly Skipper was Brick’s gay lover. Was it his betrayal of his friend or his lover he mourned? Probably the later.

But really….2000 a minute! Jeez.

http://twitter.com/TenuredRadical Claire Potter

I know — it’s worth aspiring to isn’t it?

http://twitter.com/liberalcynic Liberalcynic

Haha. I recently wrote a blog post where I used ‘whilst.’ Reading it again made me cringe. I haven’t switched it to while yet for some reason. You seem to be a language purist. I am too, for the most part.