What English expression do you hate the most?

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Gwylan

Veteran
Location
All at sea⛵
The chap you point at the porcelain?

The point was that per-se is not even English.

And Percy has become a bit of drip
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
The point was that per-se is not even English.

What is English, though?

Thanks to a long history of commerce, conflict, and empire the language has had input from other lands for centuries so it’s not surprising that foreign-origin words persist and become absorbed into English (algebra, orange, bungalow, yacht, pyjamas, mortgage &c).

And speaking of per se, it was recited daily in this country as part of teaching children the 27 letters of the alphabet until the early 1800s. After x,y,z came the symbol for and : &, recited as ‘and, per se: and’. This had gradually become slurred so that we ended up with its current name, the ampersand.
 
'Woke': Similar to 'snowflake' but directed at such terrible things as the modern day world have decided to champion (human rights, pollution, the ozone layer, the BBC etc, etc etc) that your tiny little mind can't comprehend because it didn't happen in 1972.

"Woke" used to mean one thing but has been redefined so much by both extremes that it's either an insult or holy writ, depending on who you ask. Either way it's become pretty much useless.
 
English is a West Germanic language that originated in Britain during the early Middle Ages. It is the most spoken language in the world, and is the primary language in many countries.

Rule Britania!

My German teacher used to say, "English is really a dialect of German, and French laid over Latin and Greek". It's probably the most European of languages, a sort of pre-modern Esperanto.

As a side note, that was the teacher that got me so enthused by German from day one that I'm here today, bless her. I wish I could find her and say thank you.
 
So does that mean that GERMAN is the most spoken language in the world?? :whistle:

Ssh... don't tell the English; you'll upset @Drago.

Strictly speaking, I suspect it's more likely to be based on a variant of Ostfälisch (Eastphalian) or similar. I've noticed that then in the Netherlands I could often understand the gist of what people were saying; certainly not word for word, or in any kind of detail, but between German and English I could pick up simpler concepts.
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
"Woke" used to mean one thing but has been redefined so much by both extremes that it's either an insult or holy writ, depending on who you ask. Either way it's become pretty much useless.

It's a path that is followed by many popular new terms.

I recall, back in the 80s, reading a piece about the word "yuppie", a quote from which has stuck in my mind. The article complained that yuppie used to have quite a specific meaning but had become so devalued that it was being applied to "anyone who can afford a pair of socks".
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
English is a West Germanic language that originated in Britain during the early Middle Ages. It is the most spoken language in the world, and is the primary language in many countries.

Rule Britania!

Indeed. Yet none, or very few, of us today would look at text from back then and understand it, so is it English? And nobody from the middle ages would understand any of our English either, yet we are both speaking the same ‘language’. My point to Gwylan was that languages evolve and it’s generally impossible to protect them from foreign incursion.
 
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