linguistically annoying

When did so many people stop saying "be-all end-all" and start saying "end-all be-all"? It annoys the fuck out of me. "Be-all end-all" or "be-all and end-all" is the correct phrase. If you put "end-all" first, you can't even find it at Dictionary.com.

I think a lot of linguistic "innovations" start life as something misheard. The mondegreen is then propagated among people who don't know better, after which it's seized upon by the larger populace as A New Thing. Mishearing "kerfuffle" as "kerfluffle," for example: "kerfluffle" is now considered a legitimate alternate form because enough dumb fucks are saying it that way. Or pronouncing "aforementioned" as AFFER-mentioned instead of the correct uh-FORE-mentioned. In the case of AFFER-mentioned, though, it may not be so much a matter of mishearing as a matter of someone seeing the word on the page, mispronouncing it, and having that mispronunciation propagate among the troglodytes.

It's a sad fact of life: stupid people change language. And while I'm at it. I'm annoyed by a bunch of recent slang. Here are some examples:

1. jelly = jealous

I know that, in British English, there's that tendency to chop off word endings: hols for holiday, and rellies for relatives. (And on one British cooking channel on YouTube, spag bol for "spaghetti bolognese.") That annoys me, too, but maybe not as much because UK English isn't my English.

2. sus = suspicious, suspiciously

This is just laziness rearing its ugly head.

3. sketch = sketchy

What, you can't add a simple "y"? This is laziness, too.

4. take the L = take the loss

I mentioned this one the other day, but I didn't talk about how it annoyed me.

5. press "F" to pay respects

I had to look this shit up, and it turns out I don't know this expression because I'm not a fucking gamer. It apparently comes from Call of Duty—specifically, from a reaction to a funeral cut scene in the game.

Honorable mention has to go to good on you, a not-so-recent expression that comes from Australia as far as I know (actually, the online Collins identifies it as British English), but which, thanks to films like "Finding Nemo," crossed the Pacific (or maybe the Atlantic, or both) to find a place among dimmer minds in the US, where we already say "good for you," with the "for" being barely audible, unlike the "on" in "good on you," at least the way the Aussies say it ("good ON ya', mate!"). I'm not saying the expression itself is annoying; I'm complaining about how so many Americans suddenly and blindly adopted it without even realizing it wasn't American English. I'm also not suggesting that different Englishes should never cross-pollinate; cross-pollination is a simple, brute, unavoidable fact of existence. All I'm asking for is some level of awareness among speakers of different forms of English. God knows how much UK and Aussie English have been polluted by Americanisms brought in via our ubiquitous TV shows. I'm sure there are folks in the UK and Oz who share my sentiments in terms of wanting to preserve their mother tongue.

On a more positive note, there are some expressions that don't annoy me. I like "he flipped his shit" because it's an obvious riff on "he flipped out." And now, I can't think of any more such expressions. Ah, well: the dangers of being a curmudgeon. It's hard to stay positive.