Annoying and pretentious terms.

Collected by N. Stephan Kinsella (via Metafilter). The list is excellent -- reminds me of one of my all-time favorite books: Flaubert's "Dictionary of Accepted Ideas." The list is also pretty long, so let me select a few that especially annoy me:

Quoting “Mr. Dooley”; Quoting Will Rodgers; Quoting Yogi Berra; Quoting Boswell and/or Samuel Johnson (especially the stupid one about what is impressive about a walking dog is not that he walks well but that he walks at all); Quoting Shakespeare and/or calling Shakespeare “the Bard”

Yes, especially Mr. Dooley. Especially the one about the Supreme Court: "''No matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme court follows th' iliction returns.'' Ugh! Dialect... so long after everyone's abandoned dialect humor. It's a thoroughly conventional idea, so don't repeat the most conventional way to say it. Find a new way, or shut up.

... Hey-presto!

I've never heard anyone say "hey-presto!" but that's why I hate seeing it in writing.

journeyman; yeoman’s work

Yes, please stop saying yeoman's work. No one around now has a vivid mental picture of a yeoman working, so it's an image without an image.

nonpareil (having no equal; without compare)

That annoys me by making me think of that candy I inexplicably enjoyed when I was a girl. You know what else is annoying? Young women getting nonpareils all over their lips. Somehow, I don't find it annoying in a guy. I'm more I don't know what that is, but I want one of those.

tony (as adjective, “The tony club in downtown Manhattan.”)

Right, if it's actually a club for guys named Tony it would be kind of charming.

smudge-pot (something used in tort cases for first year law students)

LOL. Love the appearance of law school on the list.

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?)

LOL... to the point of tears. Maybe there's a problem with the whole format "[noun] of [noun]" in place of "[adjective][noun]." I'm about ready to make a blanket rule. Kinsella seems so easily annoyed that he might object to "blanket rule." What the hell is a "blanket rule"?

vouchsafe (to give by way of reply )

That reminds me. Judges need to stop saying "cannot be gainsaid." And I'm delighted that if you Google that phrase, the #1 hit is this old post of mine.

worry a bone (a dog chewing/playing with a bone)

let slip the dogs of war (“slip”?)

Don't make us think, unnecessarily, of dogs. No, I don't want that as a blanket rule, because one of my favorite verbs is "dog." Not many animals get to be verbs -- bug, man, fish, cow, horse (around), monkey, ape...

bids fair (“seems likely”, as in, “Kenneth Starr’s report bids fair to become a classic, bawdy epic.”)

Had to include that, since it fits one of today's blog themes.

Kinsella also has a list of "cool terms."

epistemology

orangutan

What up?

ergonomic

“walking papers”--as in when your wife tells you if you screw up again she will sign your walking papers

I wonder what if he likes "riot act," a term that definitely annoyed George Carlin:

It's like the Riot Act. The Riot Act. They always tell you they're gonna read that to you. Have you heard this thing at all? Like when you're a kid, they threaten you.

"You wait 'til your father gets home. He's gonna read you the riot act!"

"Tell him I already read it myself. And I didn't like it, either; I consider it wordy and poorly thought out. He wants to read me something, how about 'The Gentlemen's Guide to the Golden Age of Blowjobs'?"

Enough now. Your turn.