Words we cannot abide.

[Black Hole]

I can't think of an example of this - at the moment.

Momentarily. Time-frame.

 

[RobH1]

At the moment - Now?

Waste disposal operatives - bin-men.

Bin-men probably not pc now as some councils have female staff on the road, ours does.

 

[Black Hole]

What do you want - bin-humans? I don't understand what's so difficult about (in certain contexts) "-man"/"-men" being genderless, just because some menstruating persons don't like it.

 

[RobH1]

I have no problem with bin-men as an all encompassing term, just passing a comment. 'Chairperson' is equally pc stupid.

 

[MikeSh]

I have no problem with bin-men as an all encompassing term, just passing a comment. 'Chairperson' is equally pc stupid.

Many areas don't have bins. We'd have to call ours 'bag-people' ... and most of them are bigger than me

 

[RobH1]

Many areas don't have bins. We'd have to call ours 'bag-people' ... and most of them are bigger than me

I wouldn't worry about their size, I'd be more concerned with the bags being thrown back full.

 

[Trev]

THESE are bag-people (second pic)

 

[EEPhil]

What do you want - bin-humans?

Refuse disposal operative.

I wouldn't worry about their size, I'd be more concerned with the bags being thrown back full.

And in my area they are likely to be full of dog . Certainly the public rubbish bin just outside my house gets plenty of , even though there is a dedicated dog-waste bin available just a short distance away.

THESE are bag-people (second pic)

I though bag-people was another expression for tramps or homeless people (as in - all their belongings in the bag).

 

[MikeSh]

bin-humans?

If they carry a lot they'd be bin-ladens.

OK, I'm going now ...

 

[Trev]

I though bag-people was another expression for tramps or homeless people

Yes, but I wasn't going to get as un-PC as that Phil

 

[Black Hole]

"Train station" (been there, done that).

 

[everthewatcher]

"Train station" (been there, done that).

Do you have the same problem with bus station?

 

[Black Hole]

Bus stations have always traditionally been called that. "Train" stations were traditionally called Railway Stations, and they are stations on the railway not stations on the train. Equally bad: "train tracks". It's dumbing down for a LCD reading age of 6.

Oh, and by the way, a "train" is a locomotive and carriages, not just the loco (although I would accept a loco plus tender as making up a train).

Don't try playing the consistency card, if you want consistency you had better switch to Esperanto.

 

[everthewatcher]

...they are stations on the railway not stations on the train.

That was my point. Bus stations are not stations on an omnibus just as train stations are not stations on the train.

Next: Pocket calculators.

 

[EEPhil]

Next: Pocket calculators.

Is that somebody who counts the number of pockets in a garment?
Any relation to pocket billiards?

Pocket calculator is perfectly reasonable. Some calculators in the 1970s were rather large mains driven beasts that could barely add up. A multifunctional battery powered (even programmable) calculator that fits in your pocket is...?

 

[everthewatcher]

So...

Coming in rather late on this, I posted about "So..." [on] a private forum just before this thread started.

One person posted the following which I've been meaning to copy here:

Seamus Heaney, in the introduction to his own translation of Beowulf
writes:
... It is one thing to find lexical meanings for the words and to have a
feel for how the metre might go, but it is quite another thing to find the
tuning fork that will give you the note and pitch for the overall music of
the work. .... I was lucky to hear this enabling note almost straight
away, a familiar local voice, one that had belonged to relatives of my
father's, people whom I had once described in a poem as "big voiced
Scullions".
... And when I came to ask myself how I wanted Beowulf to sound .. I
realised I wanted it to be speakable by those relatives. I therefore
tried to frame the famous opening lines in cadences that would have suited
their voices, but still echoed with the sound and sense of the Anglo-Saxon:
Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
theod-cyninga thym gefrunon
hu tha aethelingas ellen fremedon

Conventional renderings of hwaet, the first word of the poem, tend toward
the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and-
more colloquially - "listen" being some of the solutions offered
previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came
naturally to the rescue, because in that idiom "so" operates as an
expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at
the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention.
So, "so" it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns.

 

[Black Hole]

"in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention."

Very erudite, excellent explanation... but still annoying.

 

[everthewatcher]

A multifunctional battery powered (even programmable) calculator that fits in your pocket is...?

A smartphone?

 

[Trev]

What's with all the multiple full stops. That really gets up my nose.
Yes I know that yours is an ellipsis BH, but I can't for the life of me work out what words you have omitted. Or was it used to

... to represent a pause, hesitation, or trailing-off in thought or speech.

but then you had another surge of thought to put the last bit in?

 

[everthewatcher]

...but still annoying.

Particularly when it seems to be used to preface every answer to an interviewer's question in the broadcast media these days.