Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[alycidon]

Push back - awful phrase from America being used everywhere.

I've never heard it - still less know what it means. I don't even know in what context it would be used.

[Lat-Literal]

I've never heard it - still less know what it means. I don't even know in what context it would be used.

As in "Remoaners are already showing signs that they intend to push back on the referendum result" and many other examples, mostly apolitical.

King Canute would not be attempting to hold or turn back the tide in 2016 but trying to "push back" - "The tide is inward but I am in no doubt Canute will push back".

I don't like the word "remoaners" either but it is better than the phrase "full English Brexit" which doesn't make any sense.

[Serial_Apologist]

If we've had "from the get-go" I apologise, but it's a stupid expression I can't stand, which has been heard on radio and TV quite a lot recently.

[P. G. Tipps]

I don't like the word "remoaners" either but it is better than the phrase "full English Brexit" which doesn't make any sense.

The second phrase at least has the advantage of some humour which never goes amiss especially in dire times.

The first was coined by those with little or no argument and is all the sillier when one remembers that many of the same people have been moaning on about the EU since losing the first referendum almost forty years ago!

[P. G. Tipps]

'moaning on'

'elderly white men' (when used in an ill-disguised, disparaging manner ... pure ageism, racism and sexism in the same number of words?)

[P. G. Tipps]

If we've had "from the get-go" I apologise, but it's a stupid expression I can't stand, which has been heard on radio and TV quite a lot recently.

Yes, it seems to be yet another trendy American import, a sort of verbal cousin of 'every which-way'?

Following on from one of ff's posts the word 'math' was used on, of all places, Farming Today on R4 this morning. As she rightly points out what many are actually talking about is arithmetic not mathematics. At school I passed the first with flying colours but failed miserably in the second!

[jean]

...'elderly white men'...

They're always the problem...I think we have to just tell it like it is.

[alycidon]

As in "Remoaners are already showing signs that they intend to push back on the referendum result" and many other examples, mostly apolitical.

King Canute would not be attempting to hold or turn back the tide in 2016 but trying to "push back" - "The tide is inward but I am in no doubt Canute will push back".

Thank you, Lat-literal. It obviously hasn't percolated through to the Highlands yet, but I am sure that it will do so!

I don't like the word "remoaners" either but it is better than the phrase "full English Brexit" which doesn't make any sense.

Thank you, Lat-Literal. It obviously hasn't reached the Highlands yet, but it will do so!

[kernelbogey]

If we've had "from the get-go" I apologise, but it's a stupid expression I can't stand, which has been heard on radio and TV quite a lot recently.

Also 'go-to' as an adjective. E.g. 'French Frank is the go-to person for linguistics'.

Lazy journalism, IM(not VH)O.

[jean]

But go-to at least relates to its constituent parts - from the get-go doesn't!

(I don't think saying something neatly and succinctly is necessarily a sign of laziness.)

[kernelbogey]

But go-to at least relates to its constituent parts - from the get-go doesn't!

OED gives origin of 'get go' as 'African-American usage', 'perhaps after to get going', which makes some sense to me.

(I don't think saying something neatly and succinctly is necessarily a sign of laziness.)

True: but using 'go-to' evades more subtle and informative adjectives - maybe useful, obvious, pre-eminent etc.

[jean]

OED gives origin of 'get go' as 'African-American usage', 'perhaps after to get going', which makes some sense to me.

I hadn't thought of that.

But [go-to] evades more subtle adjectives - maybe useful, obvious, pre-eminent etc.

They may be 'more subtle', but they don't have the same sense of this is where you go when you want some of whatever it is!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... using 'go-to' evades more subtle and informative adjectives

... and helps out a Pish-Tush who can't reach the lower notes.

[P. G. Tipps]

'some of whatever it is'

Wouldn't it be rather neater and certainly more succinct in simply saying 'something' or even 'anything' ... ?

[jean]

No, because it has to be specified that it isn't just anything that you'd go to the designated person for - it has to be something within their perceived area of expertise.

(And nobody says 'Wouldn't it be...neater...in...saying...')