KEY POINTS:
A great discount off the less pleasant end of a baby.
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The Daily Telegraph recently held an infuriating phrases competition in which readers were asked to jam as many as possible into 150 words or so, says Mike Taylor of Papamoa. One of the winners produced this little masterpiece: "I hear what you're saying but, with all due respect, it's not exactly rocket science. Basically, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is you have to be able to tick all the boxes. It's not the end of the world, but, to be perfectly honest with you, when push comes to shove, you don't want to be literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Going forward we need to be singing from the same song sheet, but you can't see the wood from the trees. Naturally hindsight is 20/20 vision and you have to take the rough with the smooth before proceeding onwards and upwards. The bottom line is wear your heart on your sleeve and, when all is said and done, this is all part and parcel of the ongoing bigger picture. C'est la vie (if you know what I mean)."
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Reading about the under $10 CDs the other day, Theo Wilms was reminded of when his son bought four CDs from the Warehouse for $4 each and took them straight over the road to Cash Converters and was paid $5 a pop for them.
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More readers share their pet peeves about misused, overused and generally disliked words/phrases:
* An irritating overused cliche of the moment - "it was an incredible journey", says Jan Baker.
* The indiscriminate use of the word "sexy", says Ngaire Garland of Epsom. "I have even read of potatoes being 'sexy'. Please!"
* "The use of the word 'cool', which also used to be cool in the 60s, enjoyed a resurgence in the mid-late 90s and is horrendously overused by all ages, says Jean Goodbrand. "Even when you tell some people bad news, you can still get a 'cool' reply!"
* The corporate world seems to have its own vocabulary of overused words and phrases, says Alistair Skelton, citing the act of giving someone a "heads up" or dealing with an "over-arching principle" or perhaps worst of all, "reducing your carbon footprint".
* Nick Nicholas Greenlane nominates "at this point in time", "I hear what you say" and "to be perfectly honest" for the chop.
* "My pet hate is, 'I personally, myself"', says Tina Boot of Orewa.
* "I cringe when I hear people talk about 'having a feed'," says Dorine Meertens of Te Aroha. "When did we start bypassing a meal for something that sounds like what pigs do at the trough?"
* "My absolute most disliked phrase is 'quite frankly' at the start of any sentence," says Andrew. "When people in our office are getting all het-up about some topic, the quite franklys start flying thick and fast across the meeting table."
* "The most overused words in my opinion are 'I'm sorry', and 'I promise"', says Kane Rutene. True.
