Bit of a one-trick pony.
At least “one-trick”, as a standalone, is a conjoined phrase, rendering it as a singular noun.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Words or phrases that annoy you (even if you can't explain why) . . .
- Thread starter usagora
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
At least “one-trick”, as a standalone, is a conjoined phrase, rendering it as a singular noun.
to season this topic with even more variety, I’ll add a new class of entry (for which I think there’s a concept describing it, but the word eludes me at the moment): that is, words a significant share of people mispronounce, in which the spelling of the word doesn’t remotely account for any aspect of the mispronunciation. That is — pulling in phonemes where those phonemes aren’t present in the spelling.
Number one on my list? People who pronounce the word nuclear — mouth it out, sloooowly… “new” + “clear” — as… “nukular”.
Like, wat
Another pronunciation of tremendous annoyance, again, with a subset of folks:
When niche (it’s pronounced like “neesh”) gets spoken as “nitch”.
No.
One cannot bake a “kitch”. One can bake a quiche (sounds like “keesh”). The current MacBook Pro’s external case is not a “pass-titch” of prior, high-end Mac laptop cases. It’s a pastiche (“paas-teesh”). Neither of these rhymes with “witch”. And if one is a serious researcher — one who doesn‘t even think to shy from visiting a reference library or even national archives — then it’s still possible, in 2023, to rely on a thing called a microfiche. It’s not a “micro-fitch”. It’s spoken as “micro-feesh”. It does not rhyme with “hitch”.
Or for alliteration: difficult difficult Durian difficult. Horrible smelling fruit.
How about, Easy as falling off a bike? I can't figure out if it means a task is easy or difficult. Before I learned how to ride a bike, falling off one was easy; 100% success rate.🤕 But after learning how to ride a bicycle, I find it incredibly hard, if not impossible to fall of a bike due to my advanced sense of self-preservation.
Never heard that one before. When I Googled it, I didn't really see much info about it (though apparently it's the title of some book or another), but I did find the phrase, "As easy as falling off a log" which makes more sense, though I suppose you could also get skilled at log standing, lol! So in either case, I guess the phrase has in view someone with no experience attempting to ride a bike (or stand on a log).
I’ve ridden a bike for over 45 years (two wheels good) — also further dating myself.
Never once have I ever heard anyone write or say this until today. Maybe it’s because I don’t have many people in my life who didn’t learn to ride a bike a very long time ago.
Falling off a bike is easy. What you do is take your son for a bike ride into a new industrial estate - nice roads and kerbing but no buildings, lots of weeds.
As you go along, you hear a Dakota DC3 fly overhead. You know its a DC3 because of the distinctive sound of the Pratt and Whitney engines. You haven't seen one in decades. You twist your head to the right and upwards to see the plane, as you unconsciously twist the handlebars to the left, proceeding at pace into the kerb.
As you come off, you do a nice tumble-turn you learnt in Aikido 20 years before, and end up in the middle of a metre-high patch of thistles.*
* What flim-flam flaming idjit brought thistles out from Scotland anyway????
Are thistles worse than nettles in such a context?
Consider me envious and impressed on seeing the DC3 (subsequent complications notwithstanding); I'd love to have seen one.
various experienced fallers tell me that merely riding into a change of surface material will cause a bike to go out of control resulting in various broken bones for the rider
Mountain bikers.🤕 Not my cup of tea. I prefer my bones unbroken and my skin un-lacerated.🤗 Only the smooth pavement of an empty street for me. I even avoid the cycle paths--especially the psychopath filled cycle paths.
yes, but the injured riders I mentioned weren't mountain bikers but casual riders out for a pleasant ride along bike paths in urban and suburban locations. I remember hearing about spills at puddles, a small bit of mud, wet leaves, and that sort of minor situation that occasionally appear on seemingly smooth bike path pavement
Can't comment on the nettles. I have had both thistles and lawyer vine attack me with malice aforethought, but not nettles.
As for the DC3, you should fly in one. They have a large wing surface area compared to the weight of the plane. Consequently, coming in over Port Moresby when the heat off the clay makes the air rise, the plane bounces around like it was on a jumping castle.
Even as an experienced daily bicyclist, the hazards of slick, flattened autumnal leaves near a recent rainfall puddle are quite real, especially if they coincide with where a planned turn is supposed to happen or, worse, when trying to avoid an even more apparent hazard (like when trying to avoid a skunk or a trash panda who happens to find themselves in your path’s way). I’ve been extremely fortunate to have recovered from leaf-slicks since they have tended to be moments when the rear wheel lost traction.
The real fear, especially during wintertime, is to lose traction with your steering wheel, since that nearly always precedes a fall.
I have torn a rotator cuff, trying to avoid a drunken pub crawler who, oblivious to his surroundings, waltzed right into the street without looking or heeding cross traffic. This put him in my path. Although I was moving quite slowly, at around 10km/h (this was a side street), it’s still a long way down to the ground when your front wheel, rolling over black ice (late winter), loses all grip when swerving from crashing into a sudden drunkard.
I don’t care how “experienced” they believe they might be or how important they feel their “training” ride (often, but not always) with a riding partner might be to them. Each and every time I have an encounter with dudes — they’re almost always dudes — slathered in garish spandex; wearing toe-clip cleats and Oakley shades; riding on (these days) a high four-figure or even five-figure carbon fibre boutique frame; and completely oblivious of (or simply don’t care) how road protocol doesn’t change just because they’re not behind the wheel of the motor vehicle they own (inside which they spend 99.8 per cent of their life’s road time), I derisively — and somewhat loudly enough — call them “tourists”.
They are not four-season riders. They never ride their rigs in inclement weather. They almost never ride at night. They will never, ever use them for running local, routine errands. And on right-hand-drive roads they, invariably, try to pass on one’s right, which is not only illegal, it’s also extremely dangerous. Their rigs are infrequently equipped with a bell, and they even more rarely shout ahead to indicate an imminent pass.
If they can afford a high-dollar setup which they can pick up with a single pinky finger, then they can also afford to rent out track time on a nearby velodrome. Their behaviour on shared roadways and paths are what I would constitute as an analogue to what you describe as “psychopaths”.
Last edited:
Ugh, I cycle everywhere in Geneva and when I commute I ride to the main train station as well. My bike is a standard human-powered manual bike and the insane number of powerful electric bikes or the electric scooters (trotinette in French) - like kids used to use pushing with one foot except they have an ELECTRIC MOTOR and too many have psychotic riders.
Can I put an annoying French phrase? "mobilité douce" - green transport or mobility. All for the concept but not with a free for all as here with the local government trying to please everyone and pleasing none.
Oh, yes.
Slick (and slippy) flattened autumn leaves - and worse, on a wet surface - are something I well remember from my own cycling days.
Actually, they are a hazard on foot, as well.
A seasonal hazard, no doubt about that.
Slick (and slippy) flattened autumn leaves - and worse, on a wet surface - are something I well remember from my own cycling days.
Actually, they are a hazard on foot, as well.
A seasonal hazard, no doubt about that.
Last edited:
Falling into (thriving) nettles is not to be recommended.
I would love to fly in one; they are one of my favourite planes.
In the Canadian neck of the woods, many of the provinces designate, by law, actual, hand throttle-actuated motor scooters — which widely share most or all the features of a bona fide moped and sometimes even a full-fledged motorcycle — as “e-bikes”. By “widely”, they have the aforementioned hand-controlled throttle body, a speedometer, turn signals, integrated head and tail lights, and a wide seat (beneath which one can open to find a storage bin within).
This legal distinction permits their use on non-arterial paths for non-motorized vehicles and pedestrian travel, as well as on demarcated bike lanes on arterials. Unlike an ICE-based moped, no license to operate, no registration, and no insurance is required for the vehicles or of their operators.
What the rest of the world, meanwhile, knows to be e-bikes (that is, Li-ion-assisted bicycles whose motorized assist is almost entirely, if not entirely accessed by pedalling actively and using a hand-actuated controller to dial in amount of assist, and whose form factor is a direct evolution of manual-pedalled bicycles), are designated here, legally, under the neologism “pedelecs” (sometimes also seen spelled as “pedalec”).
Generally, for seasoned and ocasional bicyclists, the former — the electric mopeds-cum-“e-bikes” — have long been a scourge (it’s not hard to glean over time how a sizeable share of these operators are folks whose driving licences were suspended for drink driving or similar infraction), whereas the latter have rapidly become a routine way for food delivery couriers get around. Because the latter can pick up speed, delivery couriers will leave the bike lane and use the flow of motorized traffic on the main lanes. The former, however, go out of their way to avoid being in the flow of motorized traffic.
Although the latter have their hazardous moments (when their operators are looking down at their mounted phone, for either GPS directions or some other app taking their eyes from the road), the former are an odious, reviled lot, and they routinely endanger the safety of bicyclists in more ways than I have digits.
“E-scooters”, meanwhile — based on the standing push scooter of decades past — remain de facto illegal here, but it’s not hard to see people using them anyhow.
In descending order, my acceptance for shared use with bicyclists across these three categories are “pedelecs” first, followed by “e-scooters” (for now), and far behind those, the undisputed louts, the “e-bikes” folk.
Last edited:
Here in Switzerland e-bikes are split similar to the above.
The first type can go over 25km/h and do not need to be pedalled. They have to be registered and have a number plate. The second type have to be pedalled (even if hardly any effort is required) and have a top speed of 25kmh. They do not need any registration.
Although the latter look like normal bikes, they're easy to spot as the cyclists tend to be dressed in multiple layers of clothing and heavy coats, and you can overtake them by cycling 26 km/h Annoyingly, they accelerate from a stop extremely slowly (as many of those cyclists appear to have forgotten how to actually expend calories) but always go up to the max of 25kmh.
They probably don't even drink much coffee.
The first type can go over 25km/h and do not need to be pedalled. They have to be registered and have a number plate. The second type have to be pedalled (even if hardly any effort is required) and have a top speed of 25kmh. They do not need any registration.
Although the latter look like normal bikes, they're easy to spot as the cyclists tend to be dressed in multiple layers of clothing and heavy coats, and you can overtake them by cycling 26 km/h
Annoyingly, they accelerate from a stop extremely slowly (as many of those cyclists appear to have forgotten how to actually expend calories) but always go up to the max of 25kmh.They probably don't even drink much coffee.
When people say "oh fudge" instead of the "oh ****" Not that I want to hear the latter, but "fudge" just sounds so stupid as a replacement word. Just say "oh dang" or something instead.
EDIT: Just for the record, I did NOT type the entire "f" word above, just the first and last letter with dashes in between, but apparently even that got censored by the forum software 😮
EDIT: Just for the record, I did NOT type the entire "f" word above, just the first and last letter with dashes in between, but apparently even that got censored by the forum software 😮
Last edited:
That reminds me of a story (urban legend?) that in a news interview Bess Truman was asked, “If was there anything she could do to stop her husband, Harry Truman (US President), from using the term ‘Bull Bucky’ all the time”. Her response was, “Why would I do that, it took me years to get him to use ‘Bull Pucky’”
I remember saying this in the late 80's/early 90's in Australia. Except, "trick" was always used at the end to give the subject some cred. Example: This thread is pretty trick.
There are several words (on my mental list) which many other people will insist on avoiding to say, often by using a similar-souding homophone (even if the alternative is a nonsense word).
They may not see it, but I shake my head. I find it incredibly disappointing whenever I hear people do that.
You know what words annoy me? Multiple misspelled words and grammatical errors in a published novel, from a major publisher at that. If I can catch all this in one read-through, clearly they need to hire some more copy-editors.