Annoying misuse or mispronunciation of words or phrases

[Joe the Destroyer]

Spokane is supposed to be famous for having people who get down right irritated when they hear gross mispronunciations of anything Washington related. 

Like saying Spokane with a long a (SPO-CAIN instead of SPO-CAN).

We had an assembly when I was in high school where the guest speaker said, "Warshington."  The entire gym yelled WASHINGTON!

Or pronouncing Puget Sound with a hard g (PUG instead of PYOOJ). 

Or mispronouncing Gonzaga.  I hear a bunch say GON-ZUH-GUH.  Ugh... It's GON-ZA-GUH. 

As for me, I can't stand it when I hear the word chimera pronounced like "chicken" instead of "chemical."  I don't know why, but it drive me freakin' nuts. 

[Jim H]

Having lived in the Greater Boston area for my entire life, I hear "idear" quite a bit.  I also hear:

* Watah (instead of water)

* Fawty (instead of forty)

* Yee-ahs (instead of years)

I am very conscious of my accent and try to disguise it when I travel out of state, but it often sneaks through.

You shouldn't try to disguise that, man.  It's a great accent.  Sadly, a decaying one, like many accents in the US. 

Probably the misuse of a word that bugs me the most is how people here in the mid west use ignorant.  They've basically converted it into a slight variant on the word "rude" or "uncouth".  Like, "that was so ignorant, the way that man treated me".  I heard it occasionally that way very occasionally back in Michigan, but here in Missouri it comes up aaaallllll the time. 

A funny local one (mostly) I hear sometimes is Missouri VS Missoureh.  You can tell you're in the south in Missouri when the EE becomes EH.  Or it's just an older person talking.  My stepfather, who grew up in St. Louis city, says BOTH depending on context.

Also, online, people typing rouge instead of rogue.  I do find that a little irritating sometimes. 

[The Burgomaster]

Another word that's common (and very overused) in the Greater Boston Area is "wicked."  It's used in sentences and phrases to mean "extremely."  Examples:

* That car is wicked cool.

* He's a wicked good baseball player.

* We had a wicked good time at the party.

There's a commercial on local TV now that makes fun of Boston slang.  It's two guys asking each other questions and giving "Boston style" answers.  One of the questions is "What's the best musical ever?"  And the answer is "Wicked."

[Jack]

Probably the misuse of a word that bugs me the most is how people here in the mid west use ignorant.  They've basically converted it into a slight variant on the word "rude" or "uncouth".  Like, "that was so ignorant, the way that man treated me".  I heard it occasionally that way very occasionally back in Michigan, but here in Missouri it comes up aaaallllll the time. 

I hate that too.  I guess it makes people feel smart to say other people are dumb.  Another is "diversity" used to replace any word that has roughly the same meaning, no matter how odd it sounds.

I once knew a girl from Missouri who said "warsh".  That really bugged me.  Why stick an "r" in the middle of a perfectly good word like wash?

A few years ago, there was some politically correct effort to replace "him" with "her".  It was the most distracting thing ever, and always made me chuckle.  Especially funny was the way this replacement was never, ever used when writing about anything negative. 

[AndyC]

The one thing that drives me up the wall and over it is the annoying habit some South African newsreaders and DJs on the radio here have of ENUNCiatinG almOST evERY lettER iN A WoRD. Worse, they adopt a pseudo-British or American accent to make themselves sound important and posh. Note to them: the only people who do good British and American accents are people from those countries.

What I hate is the newsreaders who speak in their normal accent, but slip into a different one every time they read the name of some foreign place. Comes off as very pretentious. I imagine they think they're pronouncing it correctly by saying it the way the locals do, but it's just awkward. They're speaking English and using the proper accent for that, it's all right not to roll the Rs and put emphasis on different syllables.

I don't object when somebody who grew up speaking a different language pronounces my name or the name of my town a little differently, and that's when he's speaking my language. It's his accent. If I speak his name, my accent is going to come through, and there's nothing wrong with that. What gets me is these newsreaders not only come off sounding a little superior to all us rubes who don't affect different accents for various words, but they also seem kind of patronizing toward the speakers of the other languages. Like "it's OK if you mispronounce my name, because you're a foreigner, but I can speak yours as well as you do." What would seem to support this is that the practice never seems to be applied to European countries. It's always names from Central America or the Middle East - places perceived as backward.

Just comes across as really snooty in my opinion.

[Mr. DS]

My dad says "tagar" instead of "tiger". 

[Derf]

Spokane is supposed to be famous for having people who get down right irritated when they hear gross mispronunciations of anything Washington related. 

Like saying Spokane with a long a (SPO-CAIN instead of SPO-CAN).

We had an assembly when I was in high school where the guest speaker said, "Warshington."  The entire gym yelled WASHINGTON!

Or pronouncing Puget Sound with a hard g (PUG instead of PYOOJ). 

Or mispronouncing Gonzaga.  I hear a bunch say GON-ZUH-GUH.  Ugh... It's GON-ZA-GUH. 

We get that a lot in South Texas also, except I find it funny most of the time when people just can't figure out how to pronounce Spanish town names. Add to that Texans who murder the pronunciations for years, and you get some weird situations. For example, there's a town near me named Refugio. Correctly pronounced, that would be re-FOO-hee-oh. In the area, however, people have mispronounced it so long that we call the place re-FYOO-ree-oh. I don't know how many times I've heard people not from the area complain that they can't find Refury-o on the map. Or they try to pronounce it as re-FUG-ee-oh.

And AndyC, we get the accent switches here quite often as well, but kind of in reverse: We have several Hispanic newsreaders who speak with a standard broadcaster's accent until they say their name, at which time they start rolling the r's and seemingly going out of their way to "prove" their Hispanicity. I can see why you'd find the affecting of an accent as pretentious; I find these people annoying, and they are actually just reverting to their original accent.

And another peeve: People who constantly type "quite" for "quiet."

[Newt]

How about technical terms?

There something we do with horses called "longeing".  It is pretty basic, really.  The word is correctly spelled "longe" as (like many words involved in horse training) it comes from the French for "long"  (it involves using a *long* line or rope) and has been anglicised into being pronounced "lunj" and "lunj-ing".  It is more often than not mis-spelled as "lounge".  Now: how silly is that?  "I need to lounge my horse"   They write it "lounge" and pronounce it "lunj" : why can't they spell it correctly if they are going to pronounce it differently than the way it is spelled *anyway*?  Drives me crazy!

[AndyC]

I can't believe we've gotten this far without going into corporate speak.

I worked a couple of years for a guy who was a strong believer in "team." Not teams, not teamwork, not working as a team, but "team" as some sort of philosphy. I immediately pegged the guy as a self-serving jerk who could not be trusted, and the following two years pretty much confirmed it.

And of course there's "impact" as something with more pizazz than "effect." And business types took that one and ran with it. In place of "affected" we got "impacted" - something that happens to wisdom teeth and feces. And then there's the cringeworthy "impactful." Impactful? How does that sound better than "effective?"

[Newt]

And of course there's "impact" as something with more pizazz than "effect." And business types took that one and ran with it. In place of "affected" we got "impacted" - something that happens to wisdom teeth and feces. And then there's the cringeworthy "impactful." Impactful? How does that sound better than "effective?"

That one has to be the worst!

[zombie no.one]

When people say:

* "I could care less," when they really mean "I COULDN'T care less"

I find this immensely annoying. It's the most stupid mistake ever. People who are not able to work out why this doesn't make sense actually offend me.

[Joe the Destroyer]

I also can't stand could of/would of/should of in place of could've/would've/should've.

[Mofo Rising]

I view language as akin to music.

When you're talking, you don't need to be grammatically perfect. Far from it. If you make sense to the people you're talking to, mission accomplished!

However, I think that everybody has a sense of grammatically correct language. Not to get too esoteric, but I think grammatical rules are important. No matter what the content, we all have a higher sense of language than we admit to. We may not want to admit to be language snobs, but all of us can hear when somebody is making a language error. It's like listening to somebody sing a wrong note. You may not be able to pinpoint exactly what they did wrong, but you can certainly hear it.

I'll tell you the thing that annoys me more than anything else. It's the calling out of supposedly "large" words. I got called out for using the word "conducive." Ladies and gentleman, it's your language, why not learn to use it?

[Trevor]

I can't believe we've gotten this far without going into corporate speak.

I get a hell of a lot of that at work ~ quotes like "..at the end of the day..", "playing fields must be levelled..", "...previously disadvantaged communities...." and on and on, ad nauseaum. What also makes me angry is these idiots who use Latin phrases to end off their sentences. 

[retrorussell]

When people say "ite?" instead of "all right?".
Substituting an 's' in a plural word with a 'z'.  Like, "I got skillz".
And oh, the sweet irony when someone says "ignant" instead of "ignorant".  Or is it intentional?