A good friend of mine, James from Australia is very fond of using the phrase 'At the End of the Day'. This in short means, "so". I have resisted rebutting him as he finds comfort or solace in uttering this phrase so that he ends up sounding like an archaic professor in life. But when I do get to retort him, it will be either of these 2 below, but I do not want to spoil his
satisfaction from saying it just yet, so I politely listen :
a) At the end of the Day..... it becomes Night
b) At the end of the Day..... everyone dies
Here are a list (not exhaustive by any means) some more of these meaningless phrases of words which are used by people unknowingly as time fillers or wanting to sound learned.
The effect on me is the exact opposite, as it gives me the impression that the person is trying to sound like and failing to impress the listener. Here goes the top 10. They can be replaced by one singular or two words and I have added them at the end of the sentence.
1. At the end of the Day .................. so
2. To be honest ....................... frankly (you mean to say, everything else you said
beforehand was Bullshit ?!!)
3. After all thats been said and done ...... finally
4. Let me say something ........... (man, what have you been doing all this time ? Sleeping)
5. Lets be clear .......................... (this is a very common phrase used by lawyers and
politicians when they want to fudge something,
hopelessly ending up trying to sound articulate.
This ends up confusing more people, and leaves us the
viewers feeling stupid,whence in essence, the onus is on
the speaker to speak clearly in the first place.
6. Specifically .............................. (sounds impressive, but just get to the point)
7. So as to achieve ..................... (again another impressive, but leading to some lofty ideals
which 99% of the persons hearing it would have some
vague or no idea what these ideals are or stand for
8. More or Less .......................... its More or its Less. Not More or Less. Argh !
9. Can I ask a question ? ..................... hey you just did. Next question please !
10. Cut to the chase.................... (what in heaven's name is that, an American poorly made
movie cuts to the chase, when the plot is hopeless and hence have to make do
with the mandatory car chase, which gives everyone some satisfaction that $11 goes
to see some heavy metal getting crunched - its a mind numbing but somehow
hypnotic feeling watching cars flipping and getting crunched, and inevitably exploding
into a gazillion million pieces with fire, sound and oh so handsome lead actors and
voluptuous actresses walking away and fire in the background.
So you mean,when I speak, you want me to cut to the chase, and what ,feel satisfied ?
Americans are so painfully stupid in expecting a car chase or machine mangling scene,
so much so it is called a Blockbuster and it has creeped into our everyday language.
If it was a period piece with only witty dialogue and some scenery, it would be called a
Mind Bender
No comments:
Post a Comment