I Keep a Private List of Annoying Phrases, and Everyone I Love Is on It

I am least sympathetic, and most unbearable, about grammar pet peeves. “Should of” isn’t a phrase, it’s a sentence that heard “should’ve” once at a party and never double checked. I know language evolves. But it should evolve the way fish grew legs, slowly and with purpose, not because one guy typed “irregardless” in a group chat and nobody had the courage to stop him. I once corrected a waiter’s “your welcome” on a receipt, and he was right never to come back to our table.

Nothing sends me looking for the exits faster than a job that calls itself a family. My family doesn’t do quarterly reviews, and when my uncle asks me to stay late, there’s at least a ham involved. The workplace cliches are their own dialect: “nobody wants to work” from a man offering nine dollars an hour, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” from someone whose boots were a birthday present. These aren’t motivational sayings. They’re invoices with a smiley face drawn on them.

The overused phrases that sting the most are the ones people hand you with love. “Everything happens for a reason” sounds lovely until you hear it at a funeral from a cousin holding a deviled egg. People reach for these lines because silence is terrifying and a sympathy card has to say something. I’ve done it myself. I once told a friend whose dog had died that she was “chasing squirrels in heaven,” and my friend, who teaches theology, had follow up questions.

What my list has taught me is that an annoying phrase is rarely about the words. It’s about what the words are doing, which is usually getting someone out of a conversation they didn’t want to be in. “It’s not that deep” ends an argument, and “to be honest with you” buys a second to think. “Hurt people hurt people” is technically true and also exactly what a hurt person who just hurt you would say. Phrases are shortcuts, and we resent them because we can see the corner being cut.

And yet I keep the list, and I share it, and I suspect you have one too. Groaning at the same phrase as a total stranger is one of the fastest friendships available to modern humans. You hear someone sigh at “on accident” and you think, there are my people. We’re all a little petty, a little particular, and secretly thrilled to learn we’re not the only ones wincing in the meeting.

The list is long. The grudges are small. The phrase is still banned.