The New York Times Magazine has published a list of words and phrases its readers most despise. The magazine’s readers were invited to write to the magazine with their pet word peeves following a blog post titled ‘Words We Don’t Say’, featuring a list of 36 words and phrases verboten at the magazine under the editorship of Kurt Andersen. Needless to say, the readers' list is far longer. ‘Popular’ choices in this unpopularity contest included ‘impact’ (used as a verb), ‘going forward’, and ‘at the end of the day’.
Language is an emotive subject. We found other discussions of vocabulary fear and loathing. A couple of years ago the Guardian took a look at poetic peeves (‘pulchritude’, anyone?); the online magazine Socyberty has this list that includes our favourite peeve, ‘irregardless’ (language warning); and this blog post has a bunch of web-related neologisms, some of which (like ‘hyphy’, derived from ‘hyperactive’), are guaranteed to rile.
What are your pet linguistic peeves?