Phrases or words that annoy me

General

Begs the question

It’s really a logical fallacy. People should use “raises the question” instead.

Air fryer

There’s no frying. It’s a convention oven.

Homogeneous

It’s not “ha-ma-gen-ous” it’s “homo-gene-ous”. You don’t say the opposite, heterogeneous, the in the former way.

Exposed brick

Unnecessary real estate marketing. I know it’s sexier than “brick wall” but damn.

Literally

People don’t use the original meaning, but I’ve long accepted this battle is lost.

Corporate talk

Flywheel

Unnecessary business buzzword and no one knows what it actually is. I prefer “positive feedback loop” since it’s more direct and easily understandable.

Saying “giving time back” if a meeting ends early

You don’t have or own my time, thank you very much!

Learnings

We already have a word for this, and it’s called “lessons”.

“Are you free for a quick 30m chat?”

Since when is 30 minutes quick? Just drop the quick part 😭

Saying “quick question”

Often the question isn’t quick nor is the response. Why not just say “I have a question” or “question”?

People saying they’re excited at work when they’re really not.

E.g. “I’m excited to show, we’re excited to announce, this X work thing is really exciting”, etc. Frequently accompied with the flatest tone.

“Would you mind…” when asking someone to do a core job function

There’s other ways you can be polite when asking someone to do their job. How about “Could you…” or “When you have a chance…”?