Yesterday, Claire Zulkey (of Zulkey.com) posted a polemic against the phrase “On a scale of 1 to 10,” and invited her readers to chip in with their own despised clichés. Which they did:

I’m a little bit disappointed with sports stars giving it “one hundred and ten percent”. It’s beginning to sound kind of measly. How about 200%! How about 300%!

I am sympathetic to their plight, for I have my own secret watch-phrases that irritate me beyond all reasonable measure. Of course, I’m certain that I have plenty of verbal tics that drive others batty. (Though, I wonder if the person who mentioned that he or she dislikes the phrase, “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” might take some comfort from actually understanding it’s purpose and function. It means that you can not use a consumable resource while continuing to possess it. So: You have some cake. You eat the cake. There is no more cake. You are sad because there is no more cake. [This happens to me all the time.] In other words, you can not experience the pleasure of possessing a consumable while simultaneously experience the pleasure of consuming that consumable. At least, not for long.)

In spite of my own irritation at certain overused words and phrases, I still somehow find myself saying them to other people. Not all the time, mind, but often enough to be embarrassing in the context of this discussion. What’s even worse is the common thread that runs through all of the conversations where I end up deploying these foxtail-like verbal irritants: It’s almost always a conversation that I believe is wasting my time.

Take this for an example: “It is what it is.” As others have pointed out, this is a brain-dead – but ubiquitous – tautology. I hardly think anyone uses it to try to communicate any profound insight; rather, I’m pretty sure it’s an attempt to end the conversation. At least, that’s how I use it. Usually, when I receive bad news at work that nobody can do anything about, I’ll say it. In my mind, “it is what it is,” translates to, “I acknowledge that I understand the information you have just provided. Also, I have managed to immediately come to terms with the disappointing nature of the information, and you don’t have to continue talking to me in an effort to make me feel good about it. Goodbye.”

In fact, most of the time when I’m using clichés, I’m indicating that I want out of the conversation by clearly demonstrating that I am unwilling to commit more than a small amount of my feeble brain-power to talking about whatever it is we’re talking about. Because it would be rude to say, “Okay, got it. Go away now. Or I’ll go away… one of us has to leave.”

I recognize that this sort of attitude is not a very kind one. I am sorry about that; but, I am a tired, lazy man, and not every conversation deserves the effort required for me to push myself to my rhetorical and creative heights. It’s not that I don’t like the people I’m talking to in these kinds of situations, or that I don’t respect them – I just don’t like talking endlessly about nothing at work as much as they do. It’s wrong of me, but it’s just the way I am.

Incidentally, you might be interested in this list of Forbidden Words from Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strip.