the cricket one is used in my home country. I am also a AWESOME, dude and HUH? offender, and the expletives. Like our resident Lord Hatman; I regret nothing
I don't know if its been said before, but I think as and and are probably two of the most overused words in our language. Also, like others have said, I too use awesome a lot.
I've noticed that 'big' is also used far too often. People don't think of using 'huge' or 'enormous'.
I can't believe that nobody has added this one yet: Absolutely. i.e "Have you had a good day?" ............ "Absolutely ." What happened to yes, thank you or wonderful or other appropriate answers to similar questions? 'But' annoys me too. You hear a report about an accident on the news and they say ".......... but no one was killed or injured." It makes them sound disappointed to have to say that.
Nice ~ my mum's entire range of praise! Urgh!! I'm a serious awesome offender - in an effort to mix it up we started adding -ness to the end of things. So now it's awesomeness (you can guess how desperate we are!!!) The other really bad one is 'honestly' - c'mon, you can't be honest all the time!! I absolutely (<-- ha! serial offender of that too, sorry Sayso ) love the phrase "It's just not cricket!" along with "to all intents and purposes" Awesome...-ness
Ooh, and love it over used. But then again, some people just have a lot of love to give!!! 'Then again' is a problem too. Ooops
i'm not even joking like oh my god (as an example of how much I use this personally, i get suck in 'oh my god' ruts...where its the only thing that comes out of my mouth. like a o.m.g stutter) your mum (hellooo word vomit. it's my instant reaction to a lot of things, unfortunately) blatantly
I am loath to obfuscate the agenda, but given the actual battery of words available within the complete English lexicon, I would hazard that all words in common use are technically overused when compared to their wallflower brethren.
'K' - I say this far too much. I'm guilty of a lot of the words mentioned here - I use 'like' a lot when speaking out loud if I'm struggling to string a sentence together. I've also recently started saying 'absolutely', not sure why, just seems nicer than 'good' or 'great'. I say 'basically' and 'generally' a lot, too. Meh, at least I'm literate enough to use them What I think is overused is the lack of English words these days. 'hy, hw r u' and 'i lyk dis' are not English. Or anything really.
Wicked good, Wrey ILTBY, Can I buy you a vowel? Although in Australia, you seem to have a surfeit of 'U's, the way they get sprinkled around so generously.
My boss says "Zactly" for "exactly" at least ten times a day. It's now like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Another one that gets on my nerves is when a certain person at work constantly says "Make sense?" right after they have explained something to you so badly that you know they're just pretending to understand it themselves.
The most overused word of all won't even display here. Collectively the English-speaking world suffers from a kind of social rebellion Tourette's, to the point that it has become a social Rite of Passage into conformity.
Basically, personally, totally and literally are all overused and almost always unnecessary. Any site that introduced a rule saying offenders will be hung by the nuts would get my vote.
