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Words and Phrases that Bug You!


Fragile Bird

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16 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ah, come on. The saying has been used for centuries. If you are upset at evangelists and think it was something they created just to annoy atheists, you’re wrong. Once upon a time  there were basically no medicines available to treat the sick, especially when they got the the plague. Coughing and sneezing were symptoms of the plague and people said ‘bless you’ because, you know, they had a belief God was listening to everything you say and a blessing might help you survive. The saying is basically a polite habit. It’s kind of hard to stamp out centuries old sayings.

 

 

I doubt you’d be saying bless you to someone you suspected had the plague. More likely running full speed in the opposite direction so you didnt catch it yourself.

Long usage of the term doesn’t make it any less weird or annoying either. 

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On 2/7/2020 at 7:54 PM, Ramsay B. said:

It’s just one of those things I’ve never understood. Why do we feel the need to say something after a person sneezes, of all things? Then it starts to feel like an obligation if it’s only you and a stranger in say a waiting room, and they sneeze. Am I rude because I didn’t say anything?

My guess would be it dates back to the time when getting a cold or flu wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

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9 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

My guess would be it dates back to the time when getting a cold or flu wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

I always thought its etymology was like Bird said - started with the plague.  I'm pretty sure one of my teachers in, like, middle school even told us that.  But it's not what wikipedia says, at least.

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On 2/7/2020 at 12:38 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

I thought it was should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, which is the contraction of should have etc. rather than should of. Not that its particularly easy to tell this when you are just listening to speech

Yes it is. But people think it's "...of" then they start writing it that way and because no one corrects them they even start saying it more explicitly that way.

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On 2/7/2020 at 6:08 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My daughter, now 16, claims that the word "yeet" is a verb that means to violently throw something to the floor.  Has anyone actually heard this word used in conversation?

yeet is a state of mind

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On 2/8/2020 at 8:46 PM, DMC said:

I always thought its etymology was like Bird said - started with the plague.  I'm pretty sure one of my teachers in, like, middle school even told us that.  But it's not what wikipedia says, at least.

I looked up the origin of 'bless you' and found attribution to a Pope Gregory during a time of plague. In any event, someone started it centuries ago. They knew enough to suspect coughing and sneezing spread disease, even if they had other weird ideas as well regarding how a person got sick.

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56 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I looked up the origin of 'bless you' and found attribution to a Pope Gregory during a time of plague.

Yeah that's what wikipedia says, I just always assumed the association between "bless you" and the plague started during the black death in the 14th century, rather than ~800 years prior.

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22 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I see it's been mentioned already, I also feel uncomfortable when someone says "bless you" to me.

It doesn't anger me and I get that the person thinks of it as a sort of sincerity gesture, but its startling to hear it nonetheless.

I just hate the fact that people think you are rude if you dont say it to them. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I have a coworker who when he mentions that someone has died always says "passed".  Such as "when my grandpa passed" or "did you hear that Joe Blough passed?"    Every damn time.  

I just wanna holler 'for fuck sakes Joe Blough died already!  Just say he died."  As you can tell, I don't like it.        :angry2:

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7 hours ago, LongRider said:

I have a coworker who when he mentions that someone has died always says "passed".  Such as "when my grandpa passed" or "did you hear that Joe Blough passed?"    Every damn time.  

I just wanna holler 'for fuck sakes Joe Blough died already!  Just say he died."  As you can tell, I don't like it.        :angry2:

I'm the same with." S/he is in a better place now." Always have a morbid urge to ask "What, the crem?" 

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On 2/25/2020 at 5:52 PM, 6649er said:

agreeance

 

no such word (imo), yet it is becoming increasingly prevalent. why not just use 'agreement' ??

It's a word--it just isn't considered widely in use anymore. I think Fred Durst using that word back around (2001?) really annoyed people. I don't want to give him any credit at all, but it's a word. I'm not sure why people choose to use it over "agreement" either.

If I didn't mention it earlier, "suspposably" irks me. I used to think it wasn't a word (it is), but it is definitely misused majority of the time.

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On 2/7/2020 at 6:56 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The conversion of nouns into verbs irritates me too.

Ah, but Scot, the parts of speech don't function as closed cases that words cannot escape from--we should start with the function of the word as it is being used, then classify it. I suppose it sometimes goes overboard, but this is just an illustration of how strong a native speaker of a language (in English in this case) has command over the language's grammar. 

What's one you hate in particular? I know this is from early February, so I'm going to go back through the rest of the posts and see if you mentioned one. I know I've been annoyed by it too, but I am drawing a blank on examples at the moment. Maybe..."I'm yolo-ing right now!" I don't know.

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