I have no patience for anyone, but I've lots of time for you

[venta]

There will be some proper content shortly. Maybe.

However... in the interim...

I don't mind people making up words. I do it all the time, after all. But there are some neologisms which just make my skin crawl.

I was reminded of this at lunchtime when a colleague included the word "chillaxin'" in a sentence[*]; it's possibly my least-favourite word from the last few years.

Any advance on chillaxing in the horribleness stakes? Has to be a word with at least some level of usage, not something one of your mates said once.

[*] Admittedly, I suspect he did this chiefly because he thought it would make my skin crawl.

Comments

[crankst-girl.livejournal.com]

Boho. Nuff said.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't like the word boho much either, but the OED's earliest citation is 1958... so I suspect we're definitely stuck with that one!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

If we're allowed hashtags, I nominate #yolo.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm so out of touch with the kids I don't even know what that means. And I admit I'm scared to google it.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's an acronym: "You Only Live Once".

It's the ketchup of online discourse, though. Applied to everything indiscriminately, usually as a complete non-sequitur.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, I assumed it was going to be an abbrevi-manteau (eg for "YOu LOut").

I am delighted that my online discourse is restricted to people who do not use it ;)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

'YOLO is "carpe diem" for morons', said my wise-for-her-years 17 year old daughter.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Looking things up on urban dictionary is apparently good enough for court cases after all. ;-)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Quidquid latine dictum sit...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

It makes watching Springwatch a little weirder though - Iolo Williams is now Yolo in my head. Sans hashtag, thankfully.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Sans hashtag, thankfully.

Although if you ever want to annoy him on Twitter... ;-)

[shermarama]

That had been tweaking at me, too. I'd been intending to but hadn't looked up how his name was actually spelt, so thanks for that!

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Mystery solved!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

http://xkcd.com/919/

[ewx.livejournal.com]

How does shamazing grab you?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think the Prime Minister should know better but I don't find that one particularly gut-grinding, actually.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I find "feels" (as a noun; approximately equivalent to "feelings") makes my skin crawl rather.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Eww! I haven't even heard that one.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

See also "pantsfeels", meaning, approximately, lust (which is 15 gajillion letters shorter, come on people).

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I think I see it as rather affected. I don't generally mind neologisms.

http://mightygodking.com/2013/06/04/this-act-of-creative-and-historical-vandalism-is-not-technically-my-fault/

Aside, I wonder how to get going a "verbing nouns requires voicing the final consonant" meme. That ship probably sailed centuries ago though...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I use chillax to take the piss out of people who are trying to be all hipstery. I was in IKEA with unreliable car-fixing ex when we were still going out and this woman behind us in the queue at the cafe said to her kids "you two, just chillax, will you?" - we immediately turned to each other and mouthed "chillax!" and the kids saw and laughed. Sorry mum.

My most recent hated word is "storying" as used on university mailing lists to advertise events. "Storying the student experience". What's wrong with "writing the student experience as a story" or possibly "not sending me emails about your weird social sciences things as if I have time when I blatantly don't"?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I haven't heard storying to date, but it is quite ugly.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Words or phrases?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I was aiming for words, on this occasion - by the time you've added in weird marketing speak and anything said by a politician the capacity for unpleasant phrases is immense.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

In that case, I offer you 'environment' and 'respect'. Also 'family' and 'mum'.

Prove that you respect the environment by doing what any mum would do for her family. {cringe}

[ceb.livejournal.com]

But what does it *mean* that 'chilling' or 'relaxing' doesn't? Eh? Also it sounds like a brand of coldsore cream.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

"totes" and "amazo" and variant "amazeballs". Though I am about immune to these now as one of my coworkers uses them regularly.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Oh and *spit* "frenemy".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, y'know, I can almost like frenemy. Not that I've ever heard a real person actually say it.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

'Immune!' says this parasitologist.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Correctly pronounced as "taytes amayzebells" in my head.

[kauket.livejournal.com]

My Gentleman Friend Simon has created TMZ, which is short for 'totes amaze' short for 'totally amazing.'

It's amazing I let him speak sometimes ;) We never needed totes amaze, let alone TMZ.

[venta.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, if he really must TMZ is probably preferable.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I found 'jeggings' quite disturbing (as a word and as an item of clothing). But I guess that's old hat these days. How about 'cankle'?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Cankle?

I think jeggings is new enough to count, if you wish to submit it.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I warn you, you won't like it: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cankle

[venta.livejournal.com]

I dunno... if you need a word to express that concept (which, thus far in my thiry-something years of existence I never have) it doesn't seem like a dreadful one.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, it was more the needing a word for it than the word itself.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Do you mean specifically portmanteaux, or any horrible word? I'm particularly irked by any verbing. It's shockingly common in The Enterprise. "Can we workshop that?", "Will you action this?" et al.

And when the management types abuse terms that are already being abused by programmers. "Let's refactor the schedule!", "Can we have a QA step in the workflow?".

Augh!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Disliking verbing always strikes me as oddly quaint. Do you avoid common verbs like talk, sleep, drink, and stop, all of which are verbed nouns and were once neologisms like 'to workshop' is today? Or, if those are too time-hallowed for comparison: in recent years there's access, email, contact, etc?

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

It feels like the line in the sand is around being either ugly or unnecessary. "To email" feels like a reasonable neologism as the verb form popped-up contemporaneously with the noun. Similarly, your examples seem reasonable as they are both terse and not ugly. (Although do you have any links to the relevant etymological roots? http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=stop suggests that "stop" is an verbal noun rather than vice versa)

Then you get things like "medalling" in the Olympics. Which is horrible, thanks to its homophone also being in-context.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The modern noun 'stop' comes from the verb, but the verb itself comes from an earlier noun (at least, that's my understanding. But I am not an etymological expert.)

Mm, I also dislike 'to medal' for its ugliness: but I don't have that problem with your examples 'workshop' and 'action', both of which I use as cheerfully as I do 'contact'. I think having personal taste objections to particular examples is fair enough, but to decry a whole category of word formation seems a bit extreme.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wasn't specifically after portmanteaux[*] but I did want new words which are inherently horrible. There's nothing wrong with "refactor" as a word, though I concede that it can be used in various horrible ways. What is it with management types wanting to steal technical words?


[*] Due to typing failure, I nearly wrote "portmanteauz". Which is probably what they call them on da interwebs these days.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Calling the singer Rihanna 'Ri-Ri'. It sounds like a lisping two-year-old asking for the potty.