> A classic offender, “utilize” proves that longer is not always better. Why complicate things when “use” works just fine? Everett from Cumby, Texas encourages readers to “Write like you talk,” and added, “Lord, I hope you don’t talk like that.”
Reading an article when suddenly a random personal attack appears.
busterarm 17 days ago [-]
"Utilize" always makes me uncontrollably giggle due to its use in the movie Idiocracy.
deadfa11 18 days ago [-]
Yep, 100%
nicbn 18 days ago [-]
100% period.
thih9 17 days ago [-]
This. Pure facts. Literally.
Here I am, discovering in practice that each generation has their own favorite words.
egypturnash 18 days ago [-]
Unless you are Taylor Swift, it might be time to leave “era” behind. The term’s overuse has made every fleeting moment feel like it demands a historical marker. Leah of Holland, Michigan submits, “Thanks to the name of Taylor Swift’s tour, now there is an ‘era’ for everyone and everything! ‘He’s in his fatherhood era’, ‘She’s in her pottery-making era,’ etc., etc.. It’s overused and tiring.”
I’m moving on to “aeon” now.
SoftTalker 18 days ago [-]
I haven't really noticed this one. I guess I've missed out on the "era" era.
cess11 18 days ago [-]
Which ominously opens up the possibility of aeonics.
Retr0id 18 days ago [-]
The fact that nobody knows what skibidi means implies it has more life left in it
WesolyKubeczek 18 days ago [-]
For me, skibidi is always going to be connected with John Scatman first, Little.Big second, and there is no third for now.
> I'd be happy if people on HN would drop "Learnings." It just shows you never learned the word "lessons."
Agreed. Using that "L" word makes one look out-of-touch to me, and I'm disinclined to trust anyone using it.
Same for "performant". There are many ways that something can perform. Are you trying to tell me that something is fast? Why can't you just say that it's fast, and leave it at that?
Though somewhat different than the intent of the list, I'm amazed at the rise of "payed" in place of "paid". I rarely ever saw this error before a couple of years ago and now it's become commonplace, even with people who formerly used paid correctly. I keep expecting to find out it's some recent cultural reference but so far that doesn't appear to be the case.
giraffe_lady 17 days ago [-]
They're phonetically identical in my dialect so I think this is simply a spelling/transcription error, not usage per se.
summermusic 18 days ago [-]
It’s official, cringe is dead :)
binarymax 18 days ago [-]
100%
Dilettante_ 18 days ago [-]
Period.
andrepd 18 days ago [-]
The end of the cringe era, 100%, period.
thih9 18 days ago [-]
Is there an opposite list, a list of underused and trendy words?
Or does this sort of recognition already ~makes it cringe~ sorry, disqualifies the word?
vouaobrasil 18 days ago [-]
At least in my local sphere, cringe still has meaning, and I've not heard of the uses in the article although admittedly I live under a bit of a rock. The same goes for era.
I've never heard of skibidi, sorry not sorry, dropped, or IYKYK. But I do agree that "game-changer" is overused.
Minor49er 17 days ago [-]
The article sounds like someone complaining about words that they don't like to hear, but framed in a way to try to get others to stop saying them. It makes me cringe bigly
TuringNYC 18 days ago [-]
>> I've never heard of skibidi
Oh my, you need to meet some of the Gen A crowd
vouaobrasil 18 days ago [-]
To be honest I am not even sure what Gen XYZ even means any more...too many free variables!
boogieknite 18 days ago [-]
utilize been on my internal list for about a decade. always has the opposite effect as intended on me. i question if the writer is playing intellectual dress up.
our CEO does it A LOT. a personal emperors new clothes scenario. anyone ever confront upper management and correct language that signals they dont know what theyre talking about?
it seems to me that many small business ceos are emperors in new clothes talking amongst themselves so i rationalize thats just how they speak and expect to be spoken to. confronting not worth risking a knee-jerk-response to an injured ego
golly_ned 18 days ago [-]
If your ceo saying “utilize” instead of “use” is your most trenchant criticism of your ceo, consider yourself blessed. Better to let this one go.
busterarm 17 days ago [-]
If your CEO is always saying "utilize", I'd just make the "doin it" finger motions every time until he stops.
WesolyKubeczek 18 days ago [-]
Let me interject for a moment to tell you about our lord and saviour, “leverage”.
OldGuyInTheClub 18 days ago [-]
And disciples "reach out", "touch base", and "circle back."
WesolyKubeczek 18 days ago [-]
Don’t mention them in vain, lest you call Synergy from the deeps of oblivion! Best of breed, of course.
OldGuyInTheClub 18 days ago [-]
Enterprise-grade at scale.
boogieknite 18 days ago [-]
i hear "leverage" more than see it in docs/email, but almost only ever see "utilize" in writing.
WesolyKubeczek 18 days ago [-]
I’m entertaining a hypothesis that “Leverage” rolls from the tongue smoothly, but “utilize” is more of a breeze to produce on a QWERTY keyboard.
OldGuyInTheClub 18 days ago [-]
The annual list of words and phrases that have worn out their welcome.
'Slop' on the other hand has a bright future ahead. I picked it up just last week, and it is so incredibly apt at what it does. I like it (not the thing it refers to though, i.e., AI generated content and imagery).
slowhadoken 18 days ago [-]
“Optics” is at its peak. I can’t wait to see it go.
OldGuyInTheClub 18 days ago [-]
Likewise since I work in the field of actual optics. Made the list in 2019:
My maternal grandmother was a psychologist. I grew up watching pop-psychology become a thing and it drove her crazy. I thank god she passed away before "toxic" became wide spread.
LinuxBender 10 days ago [-]
When will Masters Degree be banished?
mrayycombi 18 days ago [-]
I'm glad this list dropped, these words are so cringe.
16 days ago [-]
freitasm 18 days ago [-]
Leverage and outcomes should be there.
18 days ago [-]
RecycledEle 17 days ago [-]
Is this a list of some college dean's pet peeves?
thefz 17 days ago [-]
Let me add:
"Aesthetic"
"Energy" (when used outside physics)
treetalker 17 days ago [-]
- journey (cf. era)
- highly (used as an intensifier)
slowhadoken 18 days ago [-]
"ick" also needs to die.
janmarsal 18 days ago [-]
cringe
softwaredoug 18 days ago [-]
Whatever boomer. This list is pretty cringe
lsaferite 18 days ago [-]
I know this is a joke, but it makes curious. Is "boomer" just used a derogatory term for people older than the speaker now? I ask because the youngest boomers are 60 now and in practice I see the term used against people younger than 60.
throw5959 18 days ago [-]
It's used to describe an attitude or behavioral stereotype, rather than strictly to refer to that demographic group in the US.
janmarsal 18 days ago [-]
Millennial gamers had a collective quarter-life crisis a few years back that manifested itself in form of memes where anyone who whined about modern games being bad was called an out of touch "30 year old boomer". Then as retaliation the whiners started calling anyone who defended modern games as "zoomers", which gave the generation Z a fancy new nickname.
WesolyKubeczek 18 days ago [-]
You just imagine some little shit say these words to you in precisely the way that makes your fists itch to make a dent in their face.
That said, if your antagonist evokes the “little shit” vibes without you consciously thinking that, it’s probably only fair that you evoke “boomer” vibes for them. Well.
(It’s also apparent that “boomer” has evolved to mean any old fart.)
Mountain_Skies 18 days ago [-]
It's amusing that the phrase "Don't trust anyone over 30" gained popularity when the Baby Boomers were under 30 but now the sentiment is focused against them (and Gen-X and Millennials).
kube-system 18 days ago [-]
> the youngest boomers are 60 now and in practice I see the term used against people younger than 60.
In those cases the term isn't being used because the speaker is attempting to accurately identify the age of the person they are referring to. It is name-calling.
softwaredoug 18 days ago [-]
I’m not a boomer but my kids say “Ok boomer” to me all the time
dvh 18 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 18 days ago [-]
Please don't do this here.
nyokodo 18 days ago [-]
The list isn’t about politically correct speech but more about the perception of what words have fallen out of fashion and/or become cliches.
DougN7 18 days ago [-]
Waiting for you to get attacked for using “blacklist”.
kube-system 18 days ago [-]
There's no way that wasn't satire
Freak_NL 18 days ago [-]
I'm looking forward to the day when a group of trolls, ahem, I mean concerned netizens, manages to find the right words and hype to declare 'main' an extremely harmful and hurtful word we should all avoid™.
Fortunately, for the primary git branch (which seems to be called 'main' occasionally) a good neutral alternative already exists: 'master' (like a master copy or a master key). Crisis averted.
Reading an article when suddenly a random personal attack appears.
Here I am, discovering in practice that each generation has their own favorite words.
I’m moving on to “aeon” now.
Not my kind of humor, but I remember the 420 MLG era. Brainrot is universal.
Somewhere on the internet I once ran across a HN BINGO card. From memory:
There were a bunch of others. Enough that the grid was expanded beyond B-I-N-G-O.https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2016/06/the-unendurable-...
Agreed. Using that "L" word makes one look out-of-touch to me, and I'm disinclined to trust anyone using it.
Same for "performant". There are many ways that something can perform. Are you trying to tell me that something is fast? Why can't you just say that it's fast, and leave it at that?
Sounds like something from Borat
Or does this sort of recognition already ~makes it cringe~ sorry, disqualifies the word?
I've never heard of skibidi, sorry not sorry, dropped, or IYKYK. But I do agree that "game-changer" is overused.
Oh my, you need to meet some of the Gen A crowd
our CEO does it A LOT. a personal emperors new clothes scenario. anyone ever confront upper management and correct language that signals they dont know what theyre talking about?
it seems to me that many small business ceos are emperors in new clothes talking amongst themselves so i rationalize thats just how they speak and expect to be spoken to. confronting not worth risking a knee-jerk-response to an injured ego
Pretty much everything from here: https://github.com/sam-paech/antislop-sampler/blob/main/slop...
https://www.lssu.edu/resources/about-lssu/traditions/banishe...
"Aesthetic"
"Energy" (when used outside physics)
- highly (used as an intensifier)
That said, if your antagonist evokes the “little shit” vibes without you consciously thinking that, it’s probably only fair that you evoke “boomer” vibes for them. Well.
(It’s also apparent that “boomer” has evolved to mean any old fart.)
In those cases the term isn't being used because the speaker is attempting to accurately identify the age of the person they are referring to. It is name-calling.
Fortunately, for the primary git branch (which seems to be called 'main' occasionally) a good neutral alternative already exists: 'master' (like a master copy or a master key). Crisis averted.
(U+1F37F)