Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A FEW LANGUAGE PET PEEVES

1. When people call coffee "java."
(Endemic to quippy newspaper and magazine articles where the writer apparently believes it's a faux pas to use the word coffee twice, and to the names of bad coffee shops. No coffee shop with "java" in the title is any good.) Runner-up: "joe." Who in real life calls it "joe," honestly?

2. The term "gal pal."
(Again, common to bad magazine writing.)

3. The word "gal" generally.

6 comments:

Dawn said...

Is Java Zone still operating in Oberlin?

Malena Watrous said...

"Buddy" is to the male friend what "gal pal" is to the female friend. When I was briefly internet dating, I ruled out any man who referred to his friends as "buddies."

I also hate when the merchandise in a store is referred to as "curated."

I also hate the made up word, "relatable."

kazim said...

THEY FIXED THE COFFEE AT JAVA ZONE!!!!!!!
it used to be broken. but now they fixed it.

Chelsey said...

Malena, I ban the word "relatable" from my classes! I hate everything about it: its falseness, its motives, its evil self-absorbed skewing of literature's meaning.

Dawn, yes it does still exist, with its 90s teal-inflected signage, but the interior has had a beige-and-mauve makeover. Less Holiday Inn, more Sheraton.

Kazim, I want to believe you but I don't know if I dare. I drank my last styrofoam-cupped latte from there on my campus visit and vowed Never Again.

Spain said...

Ha! I used to frequent this HORRIBLE coffee place called "Java Joe's" in San Antonio as a teenager. They had the worst lukewarm coffee. I don't know why we went there except that they put up with the fact that we were annoying teenagers and they were close to school. Eventually they were closed down because they were less of a coffee house and more of a back-door-drug-house... I guess that explains the crappy coffee.

Menina said...

I completely agree on gal pal. UGH!