There are words I don't like, and expressions as well. Maybe it's someting about age: people don't talk or write like they used to, or the way I understand to be correct. It's probably just a question of taste: I don't wholly subscribe to the old-fashioned prescriptive view that there is only one right way to express something. Language is a living organsim which evolves and develops with time.
Anyway, I want to gripe.
One of the words which I dislike is feisty. It's often used to refer to a young woman character in a work of fiction, boldly making her way in the world against male-dominated odds.
If you use a word too often it loses power and becomes boring, uninteresting. No more feisty heroines, please.
Then there's iconic, Over-used by the press to mean emblematic, well-known, symbolic, recognisable.
I really dislike today's use of sibling. For me, the expression sibling rivalry, which I imagine counts as psychologists' terminology, is normal, but to say 'I have two siblings' is not. I have a brother and a sister. It's not that hard. As an English teacher I know that my students, who are Spanish-speakers are influenced by their native language. They can say 'somos tres hermanos, dos chicas y un chico' (there are three of us, two sisters and a brother). Well I don't like it,and I have noticed that sibling is being used more and more.
An expression my students all learn not to use because I tell them is 'from my point of view'. All too often learners say this when they are expressing an opinion. If you say from my point of view it's incomplete unless you express what that point is: as a student of English, as an expert on the subject.
These are words and expressions that annoy me. Any more suggestions?
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