Word Aversion (A moist crevice in your slacks)

I don't actually hate the word "moist". Must be an ESL thing.

Are there any words or phrases that just make you gag for no reason other than they just hit your ear all wrong? I personally can't stand the phrase "tucking in" for "beginning a meal." Couldn't tell you why. It disgusts me and everyone who uses it is a bad person. Just the worst.

I'd be curious to know who else has an irrational hatred of certain words. Seems like good information to have.

 

It's barely a word anyway, but I can't stand 'frenemy'. Most twee portmanteaus, really.

 

Preternatural. A youth misspent reading Anne Rice novels has forever killed that word for me.

 

Jorts. They're denim shorts, dammit.

 

Chronicles (sounds like an unpretty foot condition)
Snack (just hate the way it sounds)
Snatch (as a verb) (brother to snack)

 

Schmear. It only comes up around bagels, which I'm rarely around, thank the gods.

 

There's a certain medical test for the ladies that I interpreted as the doctor doing something very weird with a bagel when I first heard of it...

 

Smirk.

 

I second the mention of "frenemy" and "jorts." Those aren't words, in my mind.

"Supple" just sounds unpleasantly wet. "Sluce" gives me the collywobbles. "Throng" is too damn easy to misspell.

 

Mindset, gifted, guesstimate.

 

begin began start.... I seem to use these when I am grasping for words and trying to develop a thought or picture in my head. They catch me D:

 

I do this so often in my own writing that I kill it with fire when I find it and cringe when I see it in others'.

"He began, but did he finish? Is he actively doing it? Is he frozen like a statue??"
GRUMBLE

 

"Manny" to refer to a male nanny. I don't know why, but it always makes me cringe. I see it often because Hot Male Nanny falls in love with Single Hot Dad is a fairly common trope in m/m romance.

 

'Bae'. God I deplore this word. Whoever invented it should be tracked down, kicked in the groin no fewer than 42 times, forced to wear a Jar Jar Binks costume with nothing underneath then banished to a remote island to spend the remainder of their lives contemplating the blight they have brought upon humanity.

 

I came for moist. Was somewhat disappointed.

Moist.

Gusset.

Etc.

 

I remember a comic where the Owlbear was using those terms...

 

Heck, darn, dang, frick, etc. when the speaker obviously means it as a euphemism for more "severe" language. It annoys me when I slip on that front as well. Irrational? Probably.

 

I too am a reader of Oglaf, although my reference was more back towards Coupling, a British TV show in the late 2000s.

 

I'm with you, this sort of thing pisses me off too. It's a kind of self-censorship and I can't stand it.

 

I tend to censor myself around kids, but then I usually find a different way to say what I want to say. If I'm in adult company, though, I communicate more freely, with words that illustrate the emotions attached to my meaning.

 

I used that word in my 2nd book and asked my editor if there was a better word for the hole in men's underwear, but she didn't think there was one. Is there?

It's too late for that book (it's in the galley process now) but I could use one for future purposes since for some reason I didn't like it much myself.

 

It's probably technically correct but I have only ever heard the word used in connection to female underwear by perverts.

 

I thought the gusset was the lowest portion of the underwear, pretty much what would cover the taint (anybody love that word?)

 

Mostly I've heard it referred to as a pee-hole.