Clichés

Attack is over-popular.
Architects attack shoebox homes, it declares on the BBC website today. I have a vision of a gang of architects, in their slightly bohemian take on business wear, armed with am array of drawing instruments, storming the nearest Barratt site.

I agree about decimated, Mamie. Our local rag printed something like: ' The street was decimated by the floods - 75% of homes were destroyed.'

Grrrrrrrrrrr

...and how about the use of the word 'pressurised'? "He was pressurised to do..." Wow! That must have been so painful. It suggests that a tube was inserted into an orrifice and air pumped in. Surely, he was pressured?

Gutted and gobsmacked should be banned.Am now not sure that they are cliches, but they are very irritating.

GoldenGran I loathe both expressions. I'm irritated by...'I'll give you a bell' and 'meet you at yours'...how sloppy is that?

Jess - love your I have a vision of a gang of architects, in their slightly bohemian take on business wear, armed with am array of drawing instruments, storming the nearest Barratt site. - very good observation.

Iconic is my one for the day. I have just seen an advertisement in Truro for four star hotel describing itself as iconic - what is iconic about a four star hotel? Now 7 star that might be - but I'm not likely to stay there I think

During the general election campaign last year, our local paper had the headline:
'Candidates grilled on bypass.' A pleasing picture, I must say, but risky use of metaphor. Let's get rid of words like 'grill' and, one of my pet hates, 'quizzed' in headlines.

Annobel Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

LOL susieb
I always feel sorry for the battered cod myself, but not for the stoned dates.

JessM What about olives – stoned and stuffed?

Or crushed nuts. (for top of icecream!)

Annobel/absentgrana..prize for funniest comment/s on a thread this year I think!

ow! GG
Am wondering how exactly the breadcrumbs on the outside of the M and S chicken portions are "farmhouse". Farmhouse recipe? Made by hand in a farmhouse? Crumbled farmhouse maybe?

I'm honoured, Crimson. I will keep trying .

susiecb said:

Iconic is my one for the day. I have just seen an advertisement in Truro for four star hotel describing itself as iconic - what is iconic about a four star hotel?

In my 50s I did a language course at Queensland university, Australia. One unit was linguistics, and the professor asked the students what an icon really was. I said it was an orthodox religious painting. Well, this was a large lecture hall with over a hundred students, most of whom gave me, the daft old bat in the corner, a pitying look, but where shocked to find I was right.

The word has already lost its original meaning and few young 'uns know it.

At home we love operations which are botched and a tornado invariably wreaks havoc. and do women never become pregnant?-they always fall pregnant as if they are stumbling round looking for......

My favourite (?) is something I heard in a TV weather forecast. Clouds were going to "grind to a halt". Yes, truly. That's what he said!

bigmomma: 'Clouds grinding' - isn't that what makes the thunder claps?

Awesome!

I totally agree with all of the above, but what makes me really really cringe is when my children's generation say 'we are pregnant.' Have I missed something? Since when do men become pregnant?

Oh great! I've been banging on about expensive cut flowers in cellophane/ teddies littering the streets ever since Di copped it. And on THAT subject ..had I, when I was a single mum, been hurtling round Paris in a fast car; not wearing a seat belt; with a known playboy; how many would have said, 'what an irresponsible young woman, she got her come uppance!' Hmm...

What brought that on girl's ?

...and there's "hand battered fish..." poor thing!