Sayings That Piss Me Off
Irritating phrases, silly terms, and other pedantic parlance pet peeves.
This post is by contributor Timothy Wood.
“You can see it from space.”
Newscasters especially love this one. This saying tries to express that the thing in question is so monumental it’s visible from Earth orbit.1 But if you’re in space, you can see everything. The limiting factors are clouds, how far away you are, and how much you spent on your camera.
My house is visible from space. I know because that’s where Google Maps comes from. There it is. There’s my kid’s pool and swing set. Totally, 100 percent visible from space. And it’s not even a fancy British castle surrounded by a massive estate.
“I could care less.”
This one is just, well, careless. I could care less about almost everything. I could care less if my house burns down. As it turns out, I care very much if my house burns down (especially watching the raging fires in California). If you care about anything even a little bit, then you could theoretically care less. The correct phrase is “I couldn’t care less,” meaning that you have already reached the absolute floor of human emotions in how little you care. I couldn’t care less if everyone on Jersey Shore suddenly burst into flames while also shitting themselves in public. It has no impact on me. If it did happen, I probably wouldn’t even hear about it because I don’t hang out with people who watch that kind of tripe.2
“Caucasian”
This term has thankfully declined over the years, but it’s still in use. The Caucasus Mountains are a range between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea — a region that includes countries like Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. If you’re a fifth generation Irish immigrant who lives in Queens, you’re not Caucasian; you’re white.
“Caucasian” was coined by one dude, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who had a weird obsession with human skulls, which for some reason around 1800 wasn’t a huge red flag that your Tinder match might be a serial killer. The rationale was that he thought skulls from the area around the Caucasus Mountains were the best skulls, and white people were the best people, so the two must be related. I can only assume that one of the pickup lines at the time was “Baby, I got all the right dimples in all the right places.”
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
No. It’s not. It’s darkest in the middle of the night when the Sun is opposite you vis-a-vis the planet, and the moon is either a new moon or is also opposite you. Dawn is a gradual process. Unlike space, where there is light or dark with no between, we have air and dust that reflects light. Space has hard edges. We have soft edges. Light works differently in a vacuum than it does when it can reflect off the ragweed pollen that makes you sneeze in autumn. I get that this phrase is generally used metaphorically as a kind of optimistic proverb, but really, how encouraging is it if you have to bend the laws of nature to make a situation seem better?
“God damn.”
This is less about the phrase itself and more about the fact that people get particularly offended by it, even people who’ll stub their toe and freely yell “shit shit shit fuck!” You encounter this a lot from religious folks, who seem to think the phrase is damning God. It’s not. It originated from wishing God’s wrath on others with phrases like “God damn you to Hell!” Besides, God is supposed to be omnipresent, meaning everywhere at the same time. He is therefore presumably also present in Hell, because that’s supposedly a place where one can exist. So, in a way, he’s damning himself continuously.
I’m not really sure why God needed to create a celestial BDSM dungeon in the first place instead of giving the Devil a good spanking or just poofing him out of existence, because… you know… God. In any case, the phrase “God damn” is a request. Damning God doesn’t make any sense because he’s already supposed to be there. Just like how he watches you poop. Omnipresence comes with some downsides.
“Mother fucker”
Why is this a thing? In every opposite-sex couple who’ve had a kid, dad is by definition a mother fucker. Every commercial for Cialis is basically an ad for a grandmother fucker. Moms need love too. We should encourage mother fuckers, because if you’ve ever had to deal with a newborn while also quietly sneaking away at work to pump milk in a repurposed closet, you deserve a good fucking. There better be candles and foreplay too, because you’ve earned it.
Of course, regardless of the literal definition, we all know what it means in context, including whether it’s a good or bad thing. When Jules in Pulp Fiction has a wallet that says “bad mother fucker”, we don’t wonder whether he’s insulting himself. But “fuck” is such a brilliantly flexible word that there are so many better options as a pejorative: piss fucker, horse fucker, mud fucker has a nice ring to it. Just not cunt fucker or ass fucker, because most cunt fucking and ass fucking are, if done right, perfectly consensual and enjoyable to both parties.
“It begs the question…”
Sharply pivoting away from cursing, “begging the question” is a specific philosophical term where an argument assumes the very thing it’s trying to prove. “Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player because he’s better than everyone else.” The phrase many people are looking for when they say that something “begs the question” is that something begs us to ask the question, meaning that something points to an obvious and important avenue for further clarification or investigation. The use of “the question” rather than “a question” indicates that there is really only one logical direction for a follow-up.3 If someone is banned for life from the local car wash, it really “begs us to ask” how exactly one accomplishes that. But, in their defense, grandma came out quite clean after a good pressure washing.
“The US isn’t a democracy; it’s a republic.”
This is one of those sayings on the Mount Rushmore of “a stupid person’s idea of a smart thing to say.” It’s meaningless. “Democracy” is a broad category describing systems of governance in which power derives from the people, usually in the form of elections. Most republics today — not counting obvious bullshit shams like “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” — are also democracies. People cynically pretend countries like the US are republics but not democracies only when they’re in favor of some kind of undemocratic measure. When the shoe’s on the other foot, funny enough, you never hear this pointless refrain.
See also: “The Wizards of Bullshit”
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We’re all imagining the International Space Station in Low Earth Orbit, but there are lots of possible orbits. As people who play Kerbal Space Program can attest, you can put something in orbit in all kinds of screwed up ways.
Of course, another workaround is simply to say that something “raises the question.”
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I have understood hell to be the absence of God! But I am not theologically-inclined...
“The US isn’t a democracy; it’s a republic.”
I've heard that line mostly from the FOX consumer types. I think that there are certain words and phrases that get repeated over and over on that channel that then bleed into the public sphere. It's similar to followers of a cult.
Which isn't to say that MSNBC has been above that (i.e. with referring to Trump and his supporters as "weird" in the past election season).