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Words or phrases that annoy you (even if you can't explain why) . . .
- Thread starter usagora
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Flagship is a perfectly good noun that describes something quite well, but, unfortunately, that use - originally, maritime and naval - seeped into everyday use as a metaphor ashore.Flagship already winds me up... now there going to be mini flagship phones?
Dinghy's?
Even then, it was a perfectly adequate (and sometimes, even apt) noun.
What you describe is the process of diluting - and devaluing - the power of the noun by overuse, which, of course, renders it both ridiculous and, worse, no longer remotely accurate.
For, of course, you are perfectly right: How many "flagship" models can you actually have at the one time?
A fleet used to go to sea with only one, flying the flag of the admiral who commanded that fleet, hence, it was described as a "flagship".
"Decimate" when used to describe anything other than killing one in ten as a punishment.
There's a youtube channel called chateau diaries and the woman on there called Stephanie has a really irritating habit of describing everything , and i mean EVERYTHING as 'beautiful' , it was ok the first dozen times but every second word and it's driving me nuts
Perhaps this is because she is aiming to be a beautiful soul and trying very hard to manifest even more beautiful into her life? I am not aware of this channel but this seems to be the general message of most influencers.
I am sure that some might say that great is another great word to manifest better things into ones life.
Ok, well that was the historical meaning of the word, but, look it up. The modern meaning has changed a bit.
Of course language changes. Typically this can be done through natural progression, though increasingly it is done for social reasons. Regardless, we lose something when we lose the meanings of our words, for better and for worse.
OK, the part of this I emphasized above asks you and all others reading for some slightly more thoughtful reflection, as the emphasized passage isn’t well thought out.
The creation, use, and exchange of language as a medium for communication isn’t, in of itself, a “natural” phenomenon as, I’m going to emphasize, humanity tends to describe “nature” as discrete from “social” and “society”. Even communication itself is a marker of a social construction — which means, yes, other species which communicate between and across one another are a kind of social construction, in of themselves, even if humanity hasn’t yet made sense of those just yet.
Language (and languages, including archaic languages, languages of exclusion, sub-cultural vernacular, generational vernacular, consumer vernacular, and vocational/professional vernacular) is constructed, socially. Human language is also a technology.
Why?
Because natural factors like zoology, geology, cosmology, vulcanology, seismology, chronology, climatology — by now you get the point — don’t factor into it (not directly, at least).
Indirectly? Yes, because the intermediary of their interpretation — their reifier, interpreter, and observer — is, well, humanity. And we construct meaning (like words, phases, expressions) to make cognitive sense of those natural phenomena.
To language, we — all of humanity — create it, use it, adjust it, adapt it, enhance it, define it, and even eliminate it (usually, though not always, through violent actions like wiping out a society, via their actual slaughter, or by concerted dissolution and isolation).
Either language, in itself, is “natural”, or it is “social”. Or, it is both.
Given my understanding of “natural” and “social”, as humanity tends to describe them generally, language is, arguably, a phenomenon of both, but largely a social one. Language is “natural” only in a sense that the natural processes of evolution on this planet allowed humanity to evolve down the particular branch of life which contains all mammals and, further out, primates (note: on the linked diagram, we’re found at the very distal tip of the very end, in red).
Ruminate on that for a little while. No, really. I mean it. Give yourself a walk at your nearest park, look at the life around you and the sky above, and reflect on that notion.
“Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful.”
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Once more, the OED is doing part of the hard work.
“Hey-hey, ho-ho,” a descendant of “hale and how”, better known to us these days as “hey-ho” (and, occasionally, “heigh-ho”, as in the song), is a collective chant of rhythmic co-ordination now used in unison protests — as these go hand-in-hand with collective, co-ordinated labour and motion of groups working together for a common goal.
Its evolution to “hey-hey, ho-ho” is descended directly from use of the “hey-hey, ho-ho” chant used by co-ordinated sporting fans in arenas going back to at least the 19th century which, no doubt, hosted a lot of mariners — merchant sailors, military sailors, buccaneers, and so on — on shore leave.
How it got to a modern-day protestor chant, however, comes from a pretty ugly mutation:
The recorded first leap from sporting’s “hey-hey, ho-ho… got to go” chant (later, in post-WWII sporting events, becoming “let’s go [home team… or similar]”) were by white supremacists in Alabama protesting the undergraduate application of a student named Autherine Lucy, a Black student who had shown the grit to try to apply for undergrad admission at her in-state public university, the University of Alabama, in 1956.
So in that sense, the direct leap — the spark, if you will — to the modern protesting realm, directly from the sporting arena, is a pretty unsavoury one. I think it’s safe to deduce this is partly the Crimson Tide’s fault, as the Venn overlap in 1956 between Red Tide football fans and white supremacists would have been almost a complete overlap.
“Hey-ho”, as well, is used in many military chants and marching songs — all, no doubt, direct descendants from the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese militarizing of the high seas, post-1500.
Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, if one contemplates redemption — it makes a lot of sense: it helps to keep large groups of people in synchrony on a common task.
(You’d have probably gotten along with this reddit poster on the very same matter, who was unable to provide an alternative.)
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Interesting. I always (obviously incorrectly) associated it with the Seven Dwarfs’ mining song from the 1937 Disney animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.Once more, the OED is doing part of the hard work.
View attachment 2285448
“Hey-hey, ho-ho,” a descendant of “hale and how”, better known to us these days as “hey-ho” (and, occasionally, “heigh-ho”, as in the song), is a collective chant of rhythmic co-ordination now used in unison protests — as these go hand-in-hand with collective, co-ordinated labour and motion of groups working together for a common goal.
Its evolution to “hey-hey, ho-ho” is descended directly from use of the “hey-hey, ho-ho” chant used by co-ordinated sporting fans in arenas going back to at least the 19th century which, no doubt, hosted a lot of mariners — merchant sailors, military sailors, buccaneers, and so on — on shore leave.
How it got to a modern-day protestor chant, however, comes from a pretty ugly mutation:
The recorded first leap from sporting’s “hey-hey, ho-ho… got to go” chant (later, in post-WWII sporting events, becoming “let’s go [home team… or similar]”) were by white supremacists in Alabama protesting the undergraduate application of a student named Autherine Lucy, a Black student who had shown the grit to try to apply for undergrad admission at her in-state public university, the University of Alabama, in 1956.
So in that sense, the direct leap — the spark, if you will — to the modern protesting realm, directly from the sporting arena, is a pretty unsavoury one. I think it’s safe to deduce this is partly the Crimson Tide’s fault, as the Venn overlap in 1956 between Red Tide football fans and white supremacists would have been almost a complete overlap.
“Hey-ho”, as well, is used in many military chants and marching songs — all, no doubt, direct descendants from the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese militarizing of the high seas, post-1500.
Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, if one contemplates redemption — it makes a lot of sense: it helps to keep large groups of people in synchrony on a common task.
(You’d have probably gotten along with this reddit poster on the very same matter, who was unable to provide an alternative.)
Last edited by a moderator:
Yah, its history and familiar usage was already well established by the time of Disney’s “Snow White”. But even as you think of that scene, you can’t help but think of seven cohabitating dudes working together like a well-oiled machine.
Once more, the OED is doing part of the hard work.
View attachment 2285448
“Hey-hey, ho-ho,” a descendant of “hale and how”, better known to us these days as “hey-ho” (and, occasionally, “heigh-ho”, as in the song), is a collective chant of rhythmic co-ordination now used in unison protests — as these go hand-in-hand with collective, co-ordinated labour and motion of groups working together for a common goal.
Its evolution to “hey-hey, ho-ho” is descended directly from use of the “hey-hey, ho-ho” chant used by co-ordinated sporting fans in arenas going back to at least the 19th century which, no doubt, hosted a lot of mariners — merchant sailors, military sailors, buccaneers, and so on — on shore leave.
How it got to a modern-day protestor chant, however, comes from a pretty ugly mutation:
The recorded first leap from sporting’s “hey-hey, ho-ho… got to go” chant (later, in post-WWII sporting events, becoming “let’s go [home team… or similar]”) were by white supremacists in Alabama protesting the undergraduate application of a student named Autherine Lucy, a Black student who had shown the grit to try to apply for undergrad admission at her in-state public university, the University of Alabama, in 1956.
So in that sense, the direct leap — the spark, if you will — to the modern protesting realm, directly from the sporting arena, is a pretty unsavoury one. I think it’s safe to deduce this is partly the Crimson Tide’s fault, as the Venn overlap in 1956 between Red Tide football fans and white supremacists would have been almost a complete overlap.
“Hey-ho”, as well, is used in many military chants and marching songs — all, no doubt, direct descendants from the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese militarizing of the high seas, post-1500.
Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, if one contemplates redemption — it makes a lot of sense: it helps to keep large groups of people in synchrony on a common task.
(You’d have probably gotten along with this reddit poster on the very same matter, who was unable to provide an alternative.)
I'm only talking about the context of protests. I understand that it and similar phrases are used in sports chants, non-protest marches (e.g. military), etc. and it doesn't bother me there because the context is completely different. We simply disagree on it being nonsense in the context of protests. I maintain that there are plenty of ways to chant only the protest message without wasting words with "filler" like that, and there's no disadvantage to leaving such nonsense phrases out. I think they are useless.
It isn’t about “agreement” or “disagreement”. It’s about etymology and the cold, hard facts baked into that etymological history.
The “hey-hey, ho-ho” brought over by the white supremacists back in 1956 from the sports realm used it the very same way a rock band’s drummer bangs sticks together and shouts, “A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four”: group co-ordination.
Is it — perhaps in any way — possible you may not be on-side with protesting in general? Alternately, have you a better co-ordinating chant suggestion a large group in a protest might use which would not offend your senses and sensibilities?
I’m dead serious.
I’m not sure if you are misunderstanding what I said accidentally or deliberately, but your post is largely not relevant to mine. Language can change because the words organically take on new meanings or because people prescriptively push the changes. You can conduct a post-modern, semantic deep-dive into the meanings of the words used in my post, but it at best obfuscates the point. Perhaps you can spend some time to ruminate on why you did this and how this approach to discussions undermines the ability of people to even have discussions. But, who knows, perhaps that was your intention.OK, the part of this I emphasized above asks you and all others reading for some slightly more thoughtful reflection, as the emphasized passage isn’t well thought out.
The creation, use, and exchange of language as a medium for communication isn’t, in of itself, a “natural” phenomenon as, I’m going to emphasize, humanity tends to describe “nature” as discrete from “social” and “society”. Even communication itself is a marker of a social construction — which means, yes, other species which communicate between and across one another are a kind of social construction, in of themselves, even if humanity hasn’t yet made sense of those just yet.
Language (and languages, including archaic languages, languages of exclusion, sub-cultural vernacular, generational vernacular, consumer vernacular, and vocational/professional vernacular) is constructed, socially. Human language is also a technology.
Why?
Because natural factors like zoology, geology, cosmology, vulcanology, seismology, chronology, climatology — by now you get the point — don’t factor into it (not directly, at least).
Indirectly? Yes, because the intermediary of their interpretation — their reifier, interpreter, and observer — is, well, humanity. And we construct meaning (like words, phases, expressions) to make cognitive sense of those natural phenomena.
To language, we — all of humanity — create it, use it, adjust it, adapt it, enhance it, define it, and even eliminate it (usually, though not always, through violent actions like wiping out a society, via their actual slaughter, or by concerted dissolution and isolation).
Either language, in itself, is “natural”, or it is “social”. Or, it is both.
Given my understanding of “natural” and “social”, as humanity tends to describe them generally, language is, arguably, a phenomenon of both, but largely a social one. Language is “natural” only in a sense that the natural processes of evolution on this planet allowed humanity to evolve down the particular branch of life which contains all mammals and, further out, primates (note: on the linked diagram, we’re found at the very distal tip of the very end, in red).
Ruminate on that for a little while. No, really. I mean it. Give yourself a walk at your nearest park, look at the life around you and the sky above, and reflect on that notion.
“Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful.”
This is completely not helpful and obfuscates the point the poster was making.Once more, the OED is doing part of the hard work.
View attachment 2285448
“Hey-hey, ho-ho,” a descendant of “hale and how”, better known to us these days as “hey-ho” (and, occasionally, “heigh-ho”, as in the song), is a collective chant of rhythmic co-ordination now used in unison protests — as these go hand-in-hand with collective, co-ordinated labour and motion of groups working together for a common goal.
Its evolution to “hey-hey, ho-ho” is descended directly from use of the “hey-hey, ho-ho” chant used by co-ordinated sporting fans in arenas going back to at least the 19th century which, no doubt, hosted a lot of mariners — merchant sailors, military sailors, buccaneers, and so on — on shore leave.
How it got to a modern-day protestor chant, however, comes from a pretty ugly mutation:
The recorded first leap from sporting’s “hey-hey, ho-ho… got to go” chant (later, in post-WWII sporting events, becoming “let’s go [home team… or similar]”) were by white supremacists in Alabama protesting the undergraduate application of a student named Autherine Lucy, a Black student who had shown the grit to try to apply for undergrad admission at her in-state public university, the University of Alabama, in 1956.
So in that sense, the direct leap — the spark, if you will — to the modern protesting realm, directly from the sporting arena, is a pretty unsavoury one. I think it’s safe to deduce this is partly the Crimson Tide’s fault, as the Venn overlap in 1956 between Red Tide football fans and white supremacists would have been almost a complete overlap.
“Hey-ho”, as well, is used in many military chants and marching songs — all, no doubt, direct descendants from the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese militarizing of the high seas, post-1500.
Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, if one contemplates redemption — it makes a lot of sense: it helps to keep large groups of people in synchrony on a common task.
(You’d have probably gotten along with this reddit poster on the very same matter, who was unable to provide an alternative.)
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I understood fine, thank you.
Very well.
Who — or what — then, gets charged as arbiter of assessing prescriptivism versus organics in the English language? English lacks an authoritative moderating body the way Académie Française for the French language does.
And that is also the heart of the point I made earlier. All language is deliberate, intentional, constructed. All of it — the vocabulary, the syntax, the grammar, and yes, the vernacular.
Some of that construction gets codified, unofficially, in prescriptive English dictionaries — which includes all dictionaries, save the Oxford English Dictionary (which functions to record, document, and put words into the historical record, excising nothing in the process — not even meanings which fall from favour or common usage over time, as the OED’s purpose it to make sure all historical meanings never get forgotten).
Sometimes treading into the “organic” (if, by “organic”, one actually means “spontaneous”), whatever comes of language around us, is still entirely a construct of our own doing: it shapes how we understand the world around us.
No one here is arguing to make “fetch” happen.
I’m pretty clear about this: language is our fabrication — all of it. And by “our”, I mean all people.
I would ask that you be more direct instead of being indirect, or to list your peeves, because it’s still not clear to me what you’re getting at without actual examples. Cheers.
It’s always good to ruminate. Be curious. Never let yourself become incurious.
This conversation just happened to be among the first things I read this (late) morning when I sat for my first coffee, and that’s why it got the attention it did on a slower-paced weekend day.
OK. Then if you could, for sake of this, be blunt and direct (without leaning hard on inferences, hints, or even borderline dogwhistles), what precisely are you trying to, figuratively, say? Again, as with usagora, I’m dead serious.
If necessary, turn to applied instances you can cite or link to somewhere online. Cheers.
It isn’t about “agreement” or “disagreement”. It’s about etymology and the cold, hard facts baked into that etymological history.
The “hey-hey, ho-ho” brought over by the white supremacists back in 1956 from the sports realm used it the very same way a rock band’s drummer bangs sticks together and shouts, “A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four”: group co-ordination.
Is it — perhaps in any way — possible you may not be on-side with protesting in general? Alternately, have you a better co-ordinating chant suggestion a large group in a protest might use which would not offend your senses and sensibilities?
I’m dead serious.
Once again, you're bringing up completely different contexts in which I have no issues with such phrases being used. I don't care what the origin of the phrase in question is (and I guarantee 99% of the people hearing the protests don't either); I'm simply saying I find it hurts rather than helps the message. And just because I don't like that phrase doesn't mean I don't support people's right to protest. There's no logical connection there.
Better suggestion? As I said, keep it about the message. I'm not going to post a link because invariably it will be a touchy subject that could derail the thread, but you can find plenty of videos of protests online that don't use nonsense phrases and get their point across without wasting words.
But at the end of the day, it's really not that deep. I'm not losing sleep over it. I just think it's a silly phrase that serves no helpful purpose in that context. That is indeed what we disagree on, not the etymology.
I'm done discussing it.
Fascinating post, and thank you.Once more, the OED is doing part of the hard work.
View attachment 2285448
“Hey-hey, ho-ho,” a descendant of “hale and how”, better known to us these days as “hey-ho” (and, occasionally, “heigh-ho”, as in the song), is a collective chant of rhythmic co-ordination now used in unison protests — as these go hand-in-hand with collective, co-ordinated labour and motion of groups working together for a common goal.
Its evolution to “hey-hey, ho-ho” is descended directly from use of the “hey-hey, ho-ho” chant used by co-ordinated sporting fans in arenas going back to at least the 19th century which, no doubt, hosted a lot of mariners — merchant sailors, military sailors, buccaneers, and so on — on shore leave.
How it got to a modern-day protestor chant, however, comes from a pretty ugly mutation:
The recorded first leap from sporting’s “hey-hey, ho-ho… got to go” chant (later, in post-WWII sporting events, becoming “let’s go [home team… or similar]”) were by white supremacists in Alabama protesting the undergraduate application of a student named Autherine Lucy, a Black student who had shown the grit to try to apply for undergrad admission at her in-state public university, the University of Alabama, in 1956.
So in that sense, the direct leap — the spark, if you will — to the modern protesting realm, directly from the sporting arena, is a pretty unsavoury one. I think it’s safe to deduce this is partly the Crimson Tide’s fault, as the Venn overlap in 1956 between Red Tide football fans and white supremacists would have been almost a complete overlap.
“Hey-ho”, as well, is used in many military chants and marching songs — all, no doubt, direct descendants from the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese militarizing of the high seas, post-1500.
One can not like it for whatever reason under the sun, but there is positively a sense of purpose and meaning in its usage which you (and maybe others) are only able to parse, without knowing (i.e., the literal definition of “ignorance”, redressed by the acquisition of knowledge), as “nonsense”.
Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, if one contemplates redemption — it makes a lot of sense: it helps to keep large groups of people in synchrony on a common task.
(You’d have probably gotten along with this reddit poster on the very same matter, who was unable to provide an alternative.)
I had some idea of the nautical ancestry of this, but the detailed history of the evolution of the use of this expression is absolutely fascinating.
Perhaps not everyone else is done with such discussion.
I, for one, find it fascinating.
Flagships are not unlike The Highlander.
If it never helped once, then it would never be used — ignominious roots in 1956 or otherwise.
Don’t make me bring up Marshall McLuhan…
So… borderline dogwhistle. Gotcha.
Linguistic annoyances to come from the U.S. specifically, of late, sometimes trickling their way northward:
“Alternative facts”. The concept you want, J.Q. Public, is “fiction”. Never be afraid to embrace fiction, if that’s your thing, but that goes up there with the phrase, “fake news” (i.e., propaganda): conflate and/or mix the two, in lieu of the actual concept/word, at your long-term peril.
“False narrative.” The word you want is “lie”. C‘est assez simple!
“Personal responsibility.” It may feel noble to blurt that phrase, but it’s meaningful only if the party expressing it follows up with the express clarification, “Actions — my own included — have consequences.” Unfortunately, this follow-up happens infrequently, if ever. It has, however, been an effective deflection away of one’s own conduct, though with less efficacy the more it gets used and the more the scrutiny increases.
“You know what I mean!” — as an exclamation coming, responsively, from an interlocutor (scoffing impatiently and, often enough, expressing a flustered and bothered tone as they storm off), should others hold that person blurting, “You know what I mean!” to the hot irons of literal, precise meaning. Nah, sugarbear, I do not know what you mean, because you aren’t communicating clearly, directly, and/or precisely. That’s on you. Maybe you don’t know how to; maybe you’re afraid to do so; or maybe, just maybe, you know you’re way in over your head and don’t know how to ask for a life preserver (no shame in that!). What not to do: blurt that exclamation, then double down, because you probably won’t be let off the hook so easily.
I’m sure there are probably more, much as I wrote in the linked post which brought me to this thread, but they’ll probably come to mind later.
“Alternative facts”. The concept you want, J.Q. Public, is “fiction”. Never be afraid to embrace fiction, if that’s your thing, but that goes up there with the phrase, “fake news” (i.e., propaganda): conflate and/or mix the two, in lieu of the actual concept/word, at your long-term peril.
“False narrative.” The word you want is “lie”. C‘est assez simple!
“Personal responsibility.” It may feel noble to blurt that phrase, but it’s meaningful only if the party expressing it follows up with the express clarification, “Actions — my own included — have consequences.” Unfortunately, this follow-up happens infrequently, if ever. It has, however, been an effective deflection away of one’s own conduct, though with less efficacy the more it gets used and the more the scrutiny increases.
“You know what I mean!” — as an exclamation coming, responsively, from an interlocutor (scoffing impatiently and, often enough, expressing a flustered and bothered tone as they storm off), should others hold that person blurting, “You know what I mean!” to the hot irons of literal, precise meaning. Nah, sugarbear, I do not know what you mean, because you aren’t communicating clearly, directly, and/or precisely. That’s on you. Maybe you don’t know how to; maybe you’re afraid to do so; or maybe, just maybe, you know you’re way in over your head and don’t know how to ask for a life preserver (no shame in that!). What not to do: blurt that exclamation, then double down, because you probably won’t be let off the hook so easily.
I’m sure there are probably more, much as I wrote in the linked post which brought me to this thread, but they’ll probably come to mind later.
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