Aretha’s recent death got us all listening to her records again. The great Respect features “sock it to me”, presumably including an exclamation mark, but I’m not sure as this was a specifically U.S. phrase and I don’t presume to know all its nuances. Whatever coolness it once had was, I’m guessing, torpedoed by the disgraced Nixon picking it up and using it. Long gone now anyway, the phrase and everyone involved.
Now there are a lot of phrases we take for granted, they’re fashionable, but do they add anything? Just read a long and thoughtful reader’s letter to a football website and everything was fine until the chap added, as his parting shot, “just sayin”. What does this even mean? That he’s taking less or no responsibility for what he’s just written? That we shouldn’t blame him for whatever thoughts might ensue as a result of his words? That he wants to be loved? Maybe someone of the Massive can fill us in here.
So, former phrases, present phrases – I’ll add one more category: phrases that need to go now! Stop it, will you? I’m thinking here of “spitting the dummy”, so ubiquitous that the player was doing it when substituted off, or the Chinese were doing it when the U.S.A./Britain/France/Japan sailed a ship through the South China Sea. Oh really, is that the best you can do, keyboard warrior or journalist?. “Piss on your chips”, that’s another that badly wants putting out to grass, there are other ways of putting these thoughts, you know. Do all fashionable phrases reach saturation point at some stage?
So, Massive, your ideas on old ones, good ones, awful ones, or annihilate ones.
Get on with it = definitely a good one.
I think ‘just sayin’ is really sayin’, ‘I shouldn’t need to say this, but if that’s the only way you’re going to get it…’ It’s economical, at least.
Having spent a lot of time with baby twins over the past 6 months, I have seen a lot of dummies being spat. When they sneeze is best.
“Just Sayin'” is often misused by ignorant people of set-in-stone opinions as shorthand for “Of course I’m right! How could anyone possibly disagree?”
I remember this phrase coming up before on these pages. I actually don’t mind it – I always take it as shorthand for ‘I’m right and I’m not really interested in arguing any further about it’. So it’s actually a good signal that you are better to step away from the argument as no one is going to emerge as a winner.
(Just saying)
The last time I used this phrase, earlier today, was at the end of a very informative post* about semen.
(*hur)
I always take it to be the presentation of an unwelcome truth against the grain of other opinion being deemed correct. Use it a lot. Clearly the fount of all wisdom.
Just sayin’.
(No g. Just sayin’.)
If it was spoken with an upwards inflection at the end of the diatribe I guess it would be asking for feedback.
In print, who knows?
I thought “Sock it to me” was only used once by Nixon when he made a brief appearance on the Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In TV show…they, however, drove it into the ground through overuse…if you don’t believe me, look it up in your Funk And Wagnalls.
“Just saying” ought to be nuked from orbit, though…I have ranted about it previously on this site, so shall decline doing so again.
“Nuked from orbit” = good one.
Sock it to me on Laugh In, “very interesting, but stupid”
“Piss on your chips”, that’s another that badly wants putting out to grass.
Err, putting out to grass?
“It’s a fair cop”, Jack, can’t avoid them all.
Next time, it’s “want nuking from orbit”.
😉
We need to step up the plate and take a raincheck on these phrases early doors.
Americanism, Americanism, and north of England respectively.
Okay if you’re American, otherwise not.
None of them are alright, especially the last one as it is FUCKING MEANINGLESS.
edit: The doors bit is meaningless. The only time you should be using the phrase “Early Doors” is with reference to Break On Through and Light My Fire.
Not the only time – as it’s also the title of the fab Craig Cash sitcom..
The opposite of “Early Doors” is “Late Windows”.
If it isn’t, then it should be
You are Ron Atkinson AICM $%
“It’s all gone pear-shaped” (“guv” optional except in English cop shows, where it’s pretty much mandatory).
… or tits-up – which occasionally is mangled to become “It’s all gone tits-out”. I assume it’s a mistake as it’s supposed to be negative.
There’s a cassette enthusiasts group on Twitter called Tabs Out, which I think is marvellous.
“Socks off, tab out” is the Casanova’s Code.
“Hands off cocks, on with socks!” was the army version, according to my dad.
Turns up repeatedly in Milligan’s war memoirs, so it must be true 😉
“Lost/dropped his/her bottle.” Surely something better could be devised.
Not a phrase but a one word question.
‘Hello?’ To imply the person being spoken to is mentally deficient, confused or just wrong.
I hate it. Regularly used by the bantz brigade.
Pur-leeeeeeze!
“Earth to …”
Similar to above use of “Hello?” but even worse. Deserving of a right-hander.
Hurrr
Another one I hate.
Shop staff/assistants – Instead of saying “can I help?” say “Are you OK?”
One day I will respond by saying, “I tell you what, I had a terrible childhood”
PMSL – dont think my pants will ever dry…
I dislike “Can I Help?” equally.
‘Are you alright there..?’ Stock answer from me is ‘Yes, I’m alright here, how about you?’ Awkward bugger me….
Any of these are better than being totally ignored, though.
I remember once many years ago being in a branch of Dixons wishing to buy a camera which they had on display at a good price. I stood for ages by the display in a nearly-empty shop trying to attract someone’s attention. All of the assistants were clustered around the till gossiping and completely ignoring their few customers.
I would have liked to have just walked out and taken my custom elsewhere but they were the cheapest in the area for that particular item.
Eventually I went over to the desk and asked “Just what do I have to do to get served in this shop?” Profuse apologies and eventually I got what I had come in for.
“Just saying” = “I’ve just said something contentious in the hope of getting a reaction.”
I believe it’s one of the first things they teach in troll school.
Something very puffed up chest about ‘not on my watch’.
Oooh yeah that’s a really irritating one.
Similar to ‘well not in my town’ or ‘not in this house’ or ‘not to my family’. There’s a real sense of ‘I’m all right jack so stuff the rest of you’ about it.
Or for Father Ted fans:
‘I’ve had MY fun… and that’s all that matters.’
Guy Garvey always reminds me of Fintan Stack.
Calling people “Buddy”.
On a train journey on Monday, a ticket inspector handed my ticket back saying “Thanks, Buddy”.
WTF happened to addressing members of the public as Sir or Madam?
You ever been in the west of Scotland? I get ‘bud’, ‘big man’, ‘pal’ etc. all the time from strangers. Call me MISTER Cowslip!
Maybe because I’m from Glasgow, but I’ve never liked ‘sir’ and ‘madam’. In my primary school teachers were always called Mister/Miss/Mrs Surname. When I. Ived to north Wales when I was 12 I almost fell of my chair the first time I heard one of my new school mates call a teacher ‘sir’. I honestly thought that was something that only happened in the Beano.
I certainly never used it in my many years of retail work and management, and still don’t like it as a customer. To me it always sounds like it carries an u destine of insult in British speech. I’m not too bothered about ‘mate’ (the standard address in Essex where I live now) and certainly prefer it to sir, but as I recall I got by perfectly well talking to customers who’s name I didn’t know without calling them anything at all.
French has got its Monsieur, Dutch its Meneer. The English language, though, lacks a truly neutral mode of address, true. Between fawning/obsequious (sir) and dominant/rude (you there), you’re left with mate, pal, buddy, old chap, my man, hey mister, stout yeoman, and varying degrees of slang or awkwardness. Much easier with women: they’re happy to hear lady and ladies.
These days I settle for “Your Excellency”. One can no longer expect to be addressed as “O Mighty One” in these informal times.
Whither “Effendi”?
I used to work with a man named, and always known as, Meneer. In Amsterdam, on a work jolly, he found himself, as you do, leafing idly through the merchandise, when the man behind the counter suddenly barked, “If you aren’t going to buy anything, Meneer, please leave.” Properly freaked out, he was.
Why should he call you “Sir”.
A thank you is good enough.
….because he should know his place.
He doesn’t have to call me “Sir”. He is welcome to just say Thanks. If he is going to add a honorific, I don’t want to be addressed as “Buddy” by someone I’ve never met before.
Come to think of it, I don’t really want to be addressed as Buddy by anyone I know, as well.
….well stop wearing those horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a Strat everywhere!
I also bristle at “hey buddy!” and, I’m aware I am very specific here – women much younger than me calling me “love”. I don’t mind it from someone older – but a 20 year old – no.
I had a very blokey friend with a Ray Winstone-type voice and accent. It helps to imagine him as just like Ray in, say, Nil By Mouth. He went through a phase of addressing male strangers as “love”. “Thanks Love” to a male barman, or a bloke who holds a door open, that kind of thing. He did it with absolute confidence and was never a problem.
He didn’t do it like this then…
No -he would have surely been punched.
The one that always gets me wanting to give the speaker a slap is being caled ‘fella’. Buddy or mate I can allow.
Interviewees beginning their answer with the word ‘so’.
I’m not sure when it began, but it’s ubiquitous now, and as soon as you notice it, you can’t stop hearing it.
I had a work colleague (thankfully, has moved on to pastures new) who honestly was incapable of giving a simple answer to a simple question. He irritated the hell out of everyone in the office. Every single thing you asked him was met with ‘Right…. so…. ‘ followed by a ten minute explanation, at the end of which you would be none the wiser.
‘Did you post that letter?’ ‘Right… so….’
‘Who was that call from?’ ‘Right…. so…’
‘How many cases do you have outstanding just now?’ ‘Right… so…’
He actually left under a bit of a cloud. I can probably mention this as no one at my work apart from a select few know my pseudonym on here. I met him a few weeks later and asked him ‘have you managed to find another job yet?’… ‘Right…. so….’
He is the intern from 2012 (the BBC Olympics thing) then…right?
Actually very similar!!
Yeah, cool.
The other one you can’t stop noticing once you start is ‘absolutely’. Whenever an interviewee wants to say ‘yes’ but thinks that would be too abrupt they will say ‘absolutely’.
Watch one of those daytime antique programmes where they visit a local museum for a short documentary section in the middle. In can almost guarantee you that the curator, or whoever else represents the institution, will squeeze at least 3 ‘absolutelies’ into a 2 minute interview.
“So..” is just a placeholder, exactly equivalent to beginning with “Well..”.
Signals that the questioner has been heard and avoids a silent pause before their reply while they gather their thoughts.
Better than “OK..”, in my opinion, and much better than “Er..” or “Um..”
I prefer to let people squirm in silence while I process my thoughts.
Mind you, they usually either just talk over me or walk away.
Sigh.
Our newish boss loves JFDI, which stands for “Just Effing Do It.”
Passive-aggressive of the highest order. What’s wrong with “please”?
Beats FIFO with it’s possible job loss outcomes!
‘Can I get a cappuccino ?’
‘Oh, okay. I was going to serve you it, what with that being my job, but if you want to get it yourself, then f****** well be my guest.’
This one reallywinds people up, but I’ve never understood why. It certainly didn’t bother me when I was on the other side of the till. It’s far from the only phrase in everyday speech which doesn’t obey strict grammar. Oh, and when I worked in retail, ‘You OK there?’ Was my standard offer of assistance, and what’s more I’m not even sorry.
The current favourite seems to be asking for something by saying “Have you got (half an ounce of Drum or whatever)” to which the answer should be, “No we haven’t, this screen behind me is concealing the rotting corpse of my supervisor”
Surely you were going to “serve it to them”
“Have a good one” grates me up so much I sometimes reply “I don’t believe I will” or better…”Why”?.
I’m also easily pissed by mixed sex groups refered to as “Guys”….usually in a cod mid atlantic accent.
However, I may be “Behind the curve” but I simply adore “Ahead of the curve”.
Makes me feel like Nottinghams only Astronaut/Test pilot.
Ooh yes “Have a good one” totally annoys me. I always think what is the “one” meant to refer to. I suppose it is “day” but it still leaves me wondering.
Particularly disturbing when you’re on the way into the “rest room”
Not quite optimistically, the variation used in the original Blade Runner film was “Have a better one…”
‘Any time soon’ winds me up for some reason…what is wrong with just ‘soon’?
Quite like that one actually, puts a spin on the soon, making probability and soonness very remote indeed. Pushing the simple, optimistic word soon into a hedge backwards, without being so blunt as to just negate it (not soon). Unsubtle, but subtle as well.
In Wales “I’ll be there now.” means that person will attend to you any time between the very next instant and the end of time itself.
Expression of great surprise: “Well I’ll be..” A leftover from the days when using words like “damned” was tantamount to using foul language.
Favourite variation: “Well I’ll be dipped.”
Grimsby variant – “Well, dip me in shit!”
Do you remember that Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers punchline: “Well I’ll be dipped in dogshit”?
Such a tetchy bunch..
Nyeerrrr, shut yer cake’ole!
Going forward, let’s stick a pin in all this and forge ahead.
“Let’s put that on the back burner, or shall we place it in the fridge”.
This phrase only makes sense if you work in a kitchen
I love the use of “straight out of the fridge!” in the film Beat Girl. it means “cool”.
Fridges were very exciting in 1950s England – only the Queen and Raymond Baxter had one.
WITH ALL DUE RESPECT.
Grrrr !!
I am the font of all knowledge and you are just an ignorant, thick tw@t.
It’s a bit like ‘just satin’, that one, isn’t it?
Heard regularly from Sports reporters ….. “ From the get go “
WTF.
Ah, sports. These phrases are now ubiquitous cliches in football:
he drops the shoulder (runs),
he pulls the trigger (shoots),
he asks questions (makes some effort),
he takes responsibility (a penalty),
he puts his body on the line (tackles).
Etcetera.
Just relentless.
I’d watch more football if it didn’t involve hearing all those pillocks talking about it.
And the daddy of all stock phrases is of course, ‘at the end of the day’…..
“I was sat” when they mean “I was sitting”. And the over use of “myself” e.g. “myself and Fred will be doing” rather than “Fred and I”.
This is just the spoken word. At work I could count the number of people capable of writing a couple of pages of coherent English on one hand.
“Is there anything more I can do for yourself?” 😠
That’s the one! Also “What was your name?”.
“Stinker… Oh sorry, I though you meant what was my name at school”
Old-fashioned books for learning English as a second language actually push “What was your name?” with the explanation that the past tense WAS is not time-related in this case; rather, it gives notional distance and as we all know, distance equals politeness. So it’s an authentic polite form for a not-quite-lost world.
That’ll be me away then!
“What is your name?” has echoes for me of those old WWII movies and Gestapo interrogations.
“Don’t tell him, Pike!”
I’m super excited and really pumped to see a thread about phrases we dislike.
Me as well. High Five!
Go us!!!
Buddy? Returning to the Americanisation of terms referring to people
I’d like to see the phrase ‘There’s more [insert thing*] than you can shake a stick at’ more commonly used.
Ditto ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’. This needs to be accompanied by the speaker doing a ‘double-teapot’, with fists on waist, elbows akimbo*.
Oh, and ‘She/He’s no better than she/he ought to be’.
*sorry, Moose. . .
I’ll go to the foot of our stairs – you’ve got the stance spot-on, and it’s also directed at no-one in particular, as if addressing an invisible person slightly taller than yourself.
Mrs M is very fond of “that’s a bit much” – which she applies to a range of misdemeanours, from talking too loudly on the bus all the way up to thermonuclear warfare.
The double-teapot is alive and well though, on the nation’s cricket pitches. A gentle yet effective passive-aggressive admonishment of your team-mates inability to do something. Meerkats do it, too. Teapot-ing that is, not fielding in the slips.
Ronaldo does it all the time, usually prior to a free-kick. It’s a way of saying, “Look at me please! I am important!”
The double teapot stance is often adopted by well-fed gentlemen in their 50s and 60s in golf club bars and places like that. “Here I am then!” they seem to be saying “I’m a right character, me!”.
“well-fed gentlemen in their 50s and 60s”
That’s Afterword, then.
I am a mere spring chicken at 48 (and 7/12ths).
When the house gets wild and noisy I like to issue the “turbo down” directive.
Code red! We have a situation here…
So this appeared in today’s “Independent”, in their “long read” feature. Admirable, true, worth reflecting on and not merely a rant (although the writer also does that rather well). Strongly recommended,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/english-language-destruction-technology-internet-jargon-political-war-poets-a8523796.html
Hmm.
To my mind, the ability to make oneself understood is the prime objective of language and many of the examples he decries are perfectly understandable usage. He has a right to dislike the ways in which certain words are used but I also have the right to not care about that.
A personal gripe of his is the multiple uses of the word “Space” in current English. None of the examples he gave were beyond my understanding, although one or two were rather stupid. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that, as new words enter the vocabulary so some older ones should disappear or have their usage adapted to replace words which become surplus to requirements, thus keeping the vocabulary of common speech within usable bounds..
Some “Corporate Speak” and “Psychobabble” terms have indeed become all too commonly used but also attract enough healthy derision to satisfy me that they probably won’t stick.
His little rant about the semicolon was about as far as I got before I gave up on the article. My education only progressed as far as my O-levels, of which I came away with three. Maths (scraped through on second attempt), French (lowest pass grade, but the only one in my entire class who didn’t fail it) and English Language, which I passed with an “A” grade. I don’t recall ever being taught how to use a semicolon and I still have only a vague notion of how to use one.
Nonetheless, I generally succeed in making myself understood in most circumstances.
There was an interesting little programme I accidentally caught on BBC Radio 4 a few days ago about MLE (Multicultural London English) and how many of the expressions used in it are actually derived from older versions of what is considered to be Standard English and even it’s Germanic roots.