Words and Phrases We Hate, But Helplessly Use.

A commenter at Donklephant says:

I hate that phrase, WOT [War On Terror], but we appear stuck with it.

And at Althouse I objected to the swift and un-uprootable entrenchment of the dreadful word "vlog," which sounds like bad Russian if you can say it at all. There are people who feel the same way about "blog" (though I'm not one of them). Another commenter, Mickey, sadly reproached me, "I don't think we have a choice, amba. I refused to use the word 'blog' for a long time, but that didn't do anything. Vlog is the de facto extension and it's already in widespread use. I mean, there's already a vloggercon.com, lol."

Who chooses these terms and puts them so authoritatively into circulation that we feel we "have no choice" even when they're as inaccurate as "War on Terror" or as infelicitous and tongue-twisting as "vlog"? Well, in the case of "War on Terror" I guess it's the president in his linguistic bully pulpit. He'll have us all going "nucular" yet. But "vlog"? The early adopters of these technologies are clever people. ("Google," "Froogle" for bargains, and I'm surprised they haven't yet come up with "Snoogle" for matchmaking -- maybe because it's already a pregnancy-and-nursing pillow?) Are they sometimes just in too much of a hurry to start using the stuff to bother finding a better name for it?

What here-to-stay new words and phrases can't you stand, and if you were invited to come up with something better, what would you replace them with? (I thought of "Tublog" for "vlog," but it sounds like a Danish beer. "Youvie?" Faint echoes of Norwegian delinquency, or sunscreen.)

Comments

[eusto]

Amba, amba, you and your literary sense ;) the reason why we don't have "vl" as a phoneme in English is because of arbitrary phonemic rules, not because it's inherently unpronounceable. It's a perfectly good phoneme, so let's invite in into the language. I thought "blog" was a bit gross at first, but "vlog" is a fine coinage. It's short and displays its close link to blog in its name.

I think techies have a different sense of felicitous than literary folk.

[Mr. Grouchypants]

"Vlog" is such a bad term it makes my gulliver hurt. I dislike it so much that I'd like to find the grahzny bratchny that invented it and tolchock him right in the rot.

[Alison]

The term podcast really bothers me. It's an audio file. You don't need a pod to hear it.

And here's another ludite question: are you supposed to try to pronounce vlog as a one-syllable word, or is it vee-log?

[Mr. Grouchypants]

If we have to use the term, then the best pronunciation would be "vee-log". That sounds kinda like VJ, so it hearkens back the days when MTV was still sorta cool.

[Alison]

It also confuses matters, because we don't pronounce the word blog as bee-log. But that's another literary argument, regarding parallelism of terms.

[XWL]

I can't believe I'm going to break out with the Yakov Smirnoff reference, but here it goes,
.
.
.
In America, you watch vlog, but in Soviet Russia, vlog watches you!

[Icepick]

Amba, from your own archived past, I give you "dramedy", "-- a dreadful word that sounds like it means a shot of Scotch taken to prevent seasickness while riding a camel."

And X, Yakov Smirnoff? Dude. I mean, really, DUDE. Let's let forgotten bad comedy mistakes stay safely forgotten....

[amba]

Jeez, Ice, I couldn't have found that.

[Icepick]

I just happened to be prowling your "Best of ..." and stumbled across it. The calm before the storm at work....