At year-end, this blog reported on the top five most annoying words of 2018 plus publishing a long supplemental list of words/phrases that are equally bothersome. A market research organization called OnePoll has now come up with the most annoying slang words.
According to OnePoll’s survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, the most irritating commonly used slang words, in order, are as follows:
- GOAT
- bae
- hangry
- Gucci
- ghost
- fleek
- TFW
- sussy
- throw shade
- SMH
- totes
- clap back
- turnt
- woke
- peeped
- keep it 100
- thirsty
- lit
- spill the tea
- fam
GOAT stands for the “greatest of all time,” a tireless obsession that consumes a lot of the oxygen on sports talk radio and sports talk TV. Previously, goat referred to the player that blew a game with a decisive error.
Spill the tea means gossiping.
“For the majority of usage, slang is often a playful and imaginative way of using language but, as the survey indicates, it can antagonize people when delivered in the wrong context or setting and certain terms can cause more grievance than others,” a OnePoll executive told the Daily Mail.
The poll also suggested that age 43 is the cut off for using slang.
Added the New York Post:
“One in four Americans think people who are over the age of 25 are already too old to use any form of slang at all….Thirty-seven percent found slang use in the workplace completely unacceptable and 55 percent were totally against using ‘lol’ in an email to a boss. Nearly half of people surveyed thought it was not as bad to use ‘lol’ when emailing a coworker…One in two people are not into the latest lingo seeing as 53 percent find slang annoying, but there’s definitely some words that drive people crazy more than others.”
