Top 10 Most Irritating Expressions in the English language

A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare is a new book by Jeremy Butterfield that "takes a thorough look at the English language and exposes its peculiarities and penchants, its development and difficulties, revealing exactly how it operates."

Top 10 Most Annoying Phrases
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

I'm a notorious pain-in-the-neck when it comes to poor word choice and business-speak. The words above (and so many more) are crutches for weak vocabularies.

My most hated fake/real word is incentivize. Eg. "I will incentivize the staff with a talk titled RIP Good Times."

I also get annoyed when people start statements with "hopefully", as in "Hopefully, someone will read this post and leave a comment that illustrates my genius."

For the record I take no responsibility for my own actions or statements.

Via Wired

[rp69]

For your next article consider over used and irritating acronyms, I'll help kick off your list ...

1. IMHO
2. ASAP
...

[mahauma]

My pet peeve: "No offense..."

[HANSaaS]

"on steroids". Like that's somehow a good thing.

[gevaperry]

Dave, with all due respect, you shouldn't have posted this at this moment in time. I personally have used many of these phrases on occasion. I'm not saying I use them 24/7, but rather in a fairly unique way. That said, I absolutely agree with you that it's a nightmare when people splash these words all over the place. Hey, it's not rocket science to say things in an original way. So, IMHO, we can all make an effort to step up to the plate and do it better -- you know, put our words on steroids. ASAP. No offense, of course.

Sincerely yours,
Geva

[cookdn]

Maybe I'm missing the point of Jeremy Butterfield's book title, but the phrase is 'Damp Squib' ( http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/squid.html & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_(explosive) ).

[jsoltero]

I have one more to add, Dave.

"At the end of the day..."

I'd rank that second only to "It all comes down to..."


Both make people sound like smartassess trying to 'boil things down to their essence' (oh wait, that's another one).

[MM2829]

Can anyone please send me a description of the Top 10 irritating words.
Following below are the words:
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

If you could explain these words to me, It would be very useful as we trying to let people know more about this.