Annoying and Pretentious Terms & Figures of Speech

by Stephan Kinsella on June 1, 2009

Annoying and Pretentious Terms

When someone says “to your point” or “that speaks to”
When someone like “Lulu Garcia-Navarro” overdoes the accent when they say “LA-TINO”
When someone, usually Emily Bazelon from The Slate Political Gabfest, says “lo these many years”
“cutty sark”
“speaks to”
“put paid to”
troops as plural for trooper (even though troop also means a group).
chowder (some Yankee wannabe-gumbo dish apparently)
sue for peace (negotiate, ask, for peace?)
hangdog (as in the “hangdog” looks (sad, dejected, sheepish) of Ross Geller’s character on Friends)
laureate (as in Nobel laureate)
hoi polloi (the general populace; the masses)
hoity-toity (marked by an air of assumed importance: HIGHFALUTIN)
beg to differ (“beg”? Isn’t that a little strong?)
“in the event”-as prepositional phrase, instead of “in any event” or “as it turned out”
must needs (as in, “I must needs do this”)
should instead of would (as in “I should think that you would want to go to the theater”)
mortar-board (as in the top part of a graduation cap, like I’m supposed to know that)
unawares (without warning: suddenly, unexpectedly. “It caught me unawares.”)
man of letters (“Edmund Wilson was a man of letters.” First, who the hell was Edmund Wilson? Second, what the hell is a man of letters?)
stay tuned (who even knows anymore that a TV has a tuner?)
gaol (the British English spelling of “jail”)
vouchsafe (to give by way of reply )
alarum (a call to arms
cohort (a group of individuals having a statistical factor (as age or class membership) in common in a demographic study )
pyjamas (instead of pajamas)
catsup (instead of ketchup)
waldo (as in a “doo-hickey” or “thingamabob”)
broker a deal/honest broker
ballyhooed; much-ballyhooed; long-ballyhooed
vaunted or much-vaunted
wag (noun: as in a commentator or pundit or gossip: “As one wag put it recently, …”)
writ large
nod (as in, give a nod to…)
shuffle off this mortal coil (i.e., die)
worry a bone (a dog chewing/playing with a bone)
let slip the dogs of war (“slip”?)
familiar (noun: as in, companion, or member of household of a high official)
own, used to mean “acknowledge”, as in, “I own I did not know that”
in fine, meaning, “in short”
weapon for gun
trope
re-furbish
bids fair (“seems likely”, as in, “Kenneth Starr’s report bids fair to become a classic, bawdy epic.”)
“It is meet that…”
apparatchik (a member of a Communist apparat; an official blindly devoted to superiors or to the organization. What the hell is an apparat? Why are we presumed to know Russian terms now?)
pleonastic (redundant; pleonasm: the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense (as in “the man he said”) : redundancy
antinomy (1: a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles; 2 : a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction “antinomies of beauty and evil, freedom and slavery”)
photomicrograph (instead of: microphotograph)
piping hot
strapping (as in strapping young man)
jejune (whatever it means)
manque

Cool Terms

hapless (also: witless, and half-wit)
shrapnel
morsel
cellar door
scatterbrained
copasetic
epistemology
orangutan
What up?
ergonomic
skulking
“walking papers”–as in when your wife tells you if you screw up again she will sign your walking papers
dint, as in by dint of his effort he succeeded
high dudgeon (this is a really cool one!)
red-ass; I’ve got a case of the red-ass; open up a can of whup-ass (as in, “If you don’t stop it I’m gonna open up a can of whup-ass on ya'”).
screed
frenetic
nodule
laconic; bucolic
epiphany; sublime; sanguine; sensual
anvil; mortar & pestle; cordite (i.e., smell of gunpowder)
apocalyptic; ragnarok; armageddon; gotterdammerung (all synonyms for the apocolypse)
abomination; doppelganger (double, twin); atavistic (primal, primitive)
spreadable; splayed; splendid; scrumptious; resplendant
stolid
plug; lump
vainglory
idiot savant
hirsute (hairy)
truth be told; in truth
upshot
stillborn/stillbirth (it’s just so descriptive!)
malevolent (you got your “mal” in there for “evil”, you got your “vol” in there for voluntary action or intentionality, you got it all!)
baleful (mean, yellow eyes), doleful (sad doelike eyes)
putter (as in puttering around the house)
slake, quench (slake or quench your thirst)
nit pick
sabre-rattling
well-nigh (The grass needed mowing as it was well-nigh up to my knees.)
swash-buckling (but what is a swash, and why would you buckle it?)
cunning (as in, you’re a cunning linguist; or, better yet, Hegel’s “the cunning of reason”)
brisance (the shattering effect of an explosion)
frisson (a brief moment of emotional excitement; shudder, thrill)
cavil (“beyond cavil”; cavil = a trivial and frivolous objection, or to raise a trivial objection)
purport, purportedly
terra cotta. Terra firma.
cul-de-sac
wainscoting (wood or stuff on bottom part of walls)
crimson; scarlet
nudge
hustle & bustle
cogitate
ennui (noun: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction; boredom)
Molten
smelted
clack
clamber
trenchant
toddle
toddy