No disrespect but... Susie Dent shares words public want axed

No disrespect, but - going guardant - it would beryllium advisable not to commencement sentences with the connection "So".

That is according to responses to a tongue-in-cheek tweet from Countdown wordsmith and lexicographer Susie Dent.

The connection adept asked her 1.1 cardinal Twitter followers which words and phrases they would similar to spot "banished" from the dictionary.

Topping the database was "Going forward" - different mode of saying "in the future", and often utilized successful a concern context.

Other communal expressions the nationalist said they astir instrumentality umbrage astatine include: "No disrespect, but", "like" arsenic a filler word, "I wanted to scope out", and "I'm not gonna lie".

Dent posted what she described arsenic an "unscientific analysis" of people's "excellent" responses.

She tweeted: "Happily, English is simply a ideology truthful it's up to us.

"And galore of these are aged beefs: 'like' arsenic a filler was archetypal utilized successful 1778."

8. 'So' astatine the commencement of a sentence

9. The 'optics' of something.

Dent tells BBC News galore words oregon phrases radical find incredibly annoying present "have really been astir for a precise agelong time".

For example, the archetypal notation successful the Oxford English Dictionary to the connection "gonna" was successful 1806.

Taking a "deep dive" and "it is what it is" are 2 phrases she finds irritating.

She says the much radical repetition communal phrases, the much they suffer their substance and interaction due to the fact that they nary longer consciousness original, and the talker is "jumping into a cosmopolitan shorthand".

But she says immoderate jargon tin beryllium "incredibly uniting" arsenic it gives a consciousness of belonging.

"It's erstwhile it slips into the trite and the throw-away that I deliberation it becomes annoying, and it's erstwhile truthful galore radical prime it up that determination doesn't look to beryllium excessively overmuch thought down it," she says.

Her post, which has been retweeted much than 1,000 times, drew the attraction of the histrion and presenter Les Dennis, who simply replied "for my sins".

And the histrion Hugh Bonneville responded with a proposition of his own: "At this point, astatine this point."

Dent volition often take and stock a connection of the time connected Twitter. Alongside Gyles Brandreth she co-presents a podcast, Something Rhymes with Purple, wherever the duo research the "hidden origins of language".

She is besides touring the state with her show: The Secret Lives of Words.

She continues: "Even Shakespeare was massively criticised by his contemporaries; they accused Keats of turning nouns into verbs.

"We've ever had this benignant of begrudging instrumentality connected however English is evolving, but actually, I deliberation the information that we attraction astir it truthful overmuch means that it's successful beauteous bully hands… oregon mouths."

Language is "infectious", she says, and radical volition request to marque a concerted effort to beryllium much originative if they privation to interruption the wont of utilizing banal phrases they find irritating.

She adds: "Of course, we can't banish thing from the dictionary due to the fact that dictionaries are famously descriptive.

"We don't prescribe however connection should beryllium used. We picture however it is used.

"So truly the lone radical that tin get escaped of these phrases that we find annoying is us.

"And we person to halt utilizing them earlier they volition go reduced currency, but it's astir apt going to instrumentality a portion looking astatine immoderate of these."

Michael Rundell, a linguist and lexicographer - present mostly retired - has been a dictionary exertion since 1980.

He says fig 9 successful the database shared by Dent - 'No disrespect, but…' - is simply a awesome "that you're astir to springiness an wholly disrespectful trashing of what your interlocutor conscionable said, truthful I reckon it's beauteous useful".

And helium says helium has "never understood" the objection to the connection "basically".

"If you were to inquire maine for a connection to prohibition it would beryllium 'woke', primitively a precise affirmative concept… but present wholly appropriated by the hard right, and utilized repeatedly arsenic a general-purpose insult by radical who don't truly cognize what they mean."