People have pet phrases. I have a co-worker who says “At the end of the day” all the damn time. At least once per conversation. So it goes.
I’m friends with a married couple. She says “Bottom line” all the damn time. “I had this discussion with my son. I told him, Bottom line? It’s your responsibility.” She never says “To make a long story short,” or “The thing of it is,” or anything like that. It’s always “Bottom line.”
Her husband says “Fair enough.” If he questions why you did something and you tell him, “Fair enough.” If you discuss plans of any kind, “Fair enough.”
And I think about these two people, how strong and forthright she is, how thoughtful and concerned he is, and I think these phrases aren’t tics, but expressions of their personality.
I wonder: Does everyone’s pet phrase express something unique about them?
I worked with a guy who always said ‘Fair enough’. Drove me crazy. I like the guy a lot, but he was a self-declared (and proud of it) prick.
I think his ‘Fair enough’ was an attempt to be neutral regardless of whether he agreed, disagreed, or didn’t think it was worth arguing. Particularly the last two.
I will think more on this topic.
Can I add a pet speech peeve?
Why are many people saying the letter s as sh?
I work with a lady who always says shtreet.
I want to shake her & tell her SHTOP!
When I used to listen to Howard Stern, I noticed he did it too.
Drives me up the damn wall.
“At the end of the day” drives me crazy, unless you mean the literal end of the day. It makes me want to hit the speaker upside the head with a dead fish.
Recently I’ve started saying “lovely” as my generic form of agreement, and I’m not happy about it. It just kind of slips out.
I totally get the peeves. A guy I know has this pet phrase that used to drive me INSANE, and for the life of me I can no longer remember what it is. That’s actually what started me on this train of thought.
But I’m asking something different: Do these phrases reflect our personalities? I say “fabulous” way too much. Can’t stop. Is it related to o my tendency towards hyperbole? And optimism? Are “at the end of the day” people more inclined to need to see results?
I used to use “apoplectic” a lot to describe reaction.
Now that’s hyperbole!
True, but much fun to say.
” No Problem” makes me want to put nails to blackboard.
Because it’s patronizing. See, that’s exactly expressive of a personality. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head, it’s not a problem.”
(On the other hand, I’ll say it at work to indicate, “Don’t worry about asking me for this, it’s no big.”)
Well I was reading this interesting book, and it talked about neurolingistics and how negatives like not or no, are dismissed by the brain.
So when saying “no problem” still makes the listener focus on the word “problem” indicating there is one.
Definitely interesting.
I think our pet phrases definitely reflect our personalities, though the same phrase said by different people can reflect them in different ways. I was just thinking of myself – I have two pet phrases I use almost exclusively at work – “I’m sorry” (sort of involuntarily used as a general statement) and the aforementioned “no problem” (which slips out whenever someone asks me to do something). They’re both probably related to the fact that I can be really high-strung at work/around people – I don’t want to be there, so part of me feels like I’m imposing (hence the “I’m sorry”s), and I don’t want anyone else to feel like they’re imposing on me (hence the “no problem”s). Also, with the “no problem”s, well, I like my job. And I like doing the odd tasks I get asked to do, and so “no problem” also serves as a way to let people know that no, it really ISN’T a problem, so ask me again sometime.
My dad always said “the thing is…”. He’s quite the authoritarian, and his word, in his mind, is law. “The thing is” = “this is how it is, no arguments”. And whenever he was proven wrong about something (say, in one of our discussions of history), he’d start on a stream of “thing is” statements leading back to how he was right after all.
…Whoa. Long comment. But language is fun.
Don’t worry about the long comment, Alix, I find it fascinating too.