Return of the silly little things that annoy you thread

Steve Slatcher

Steve Slatcher

Location
Manchester
I agree with @Andrew Stevenson about Australia being the source of "uni". More specifically, I blame "Neighbours" - that was where I first heard "uni" being talked about.

I also agree with Andrew that "Univ." was a common abbreviation in the 70s, but only in writing university names I think. Or "varsity" was used in some contexts, but I think that was a lot more common back in the day when there were only two of them in England, and it still has an Oxbridge ring to it.

In communities where it was not so common to go to unviversity, I'd say "college" was the norm in the 70s, even if it was actually a university being attended. 6th formers would get asked "Are you going to college?" Then there was poly(technics) and tech(nical colleges) - remember those?
 
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Ben Rotter

Location
Sydney, Australia
The ever-increasing encroachment of (ostentatious and particularly business-related) American-English into international English; including, most pointedly, the use of baseball references (a sport that is hardly played professionally outside North America), and the use of nouns as verbs (and vice versa).

I received an "invite" and she "gifted" me this bottle.

Right off the bat, he suggested we touch base on Tuesday. The math was in his wheelhouse, so we ballparked the figures; and even when a challenge came out of leftfield and threw us a curveball, where others dropped the ball, we hit a home run and created a whole new ballgame.
 
Charles Muttar

Charles Muttar

Location
St Albans
Ben Rotter said:
The ever-increasing encroachment of (ostentatious and particularly business-related) American-English into international English; including, most pointedly, the use of baseball references (a sport that is hardly played professionally outside North America), and the use of nouns as verbs (and vice versa).

I received an "invite" and she "gifted" me this bottle.

Right off the bat, he suggested we touch base on Tuesday. The math was in his wheelhouse, so we ballparked the figures; and even when a challenge came out of leftfield and threw us a curveball, where others dropped the ball, we hit a home run and created a whole new ballgame.
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Surely the thing to do, faced with this sort of rubbish, is to reply using cricket terminology?
 
Geordie Torr

Geordie Torr

Location
Winchester, UK
Australians love an abbreviation (and I say this with the deep knowledge that comes from being Australian myself). To be devastated about something is to be devo-ed and of course university becomes uni. Having been away for a while, when we moved back to live there for a bit, I came across a whole slew of new abbrevations that were unfamiliar to me, but that had obviously spread quite widely (sorry, can't think of any of them off the top of my head). I did laugh when I heard someone refer to the Melbourne Cricket Ground not as the understandable MCG, but as simply the M - saying those extra two letters had obviously just become too much effort.
 
Alex Lake

Alex Lake

Location
Deep South of Cambridgeshire
Steve Slatcher said:
I agree with @Andrew Stevenson about Australia being the source of "uni". More specifically, I blame "Neighbours" - that was where I first heard "uni" being talked about.

I also agree with Andrew that "Univ." was a common abbreviation in the 70s, but only in writing university names I think. Or "varsity" was used in some contexts, but I think that was a lot more common back in the day when there were only two of them in England, and it still has an Oxbridge ring to it.

In communities where it was not so common to go to unviversity, I'd say "college" was the norm in the 70s, even if it was actually a university being attended. 6th formers would get asked "Are you going to college?" Then there was poly(technics) and tech(nical colleges - remember those?
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Neighbours was also responsible for "Arvo" - which thankfully seems to have slipped into obscurity.

I guess it is our duty as grumpy old men to complain about changes in language usage as much as it's the duty of the next generation to move things on.
 
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Richard Lodeman

Location
Oxford
Current annoyance is the BBC Olympic round up at 7.30pm.

Having worked all day what I want to see is highlights of the day and the athletes actually competing. Not, as seems to be currently the case, about 20% competing and 80% presenter / talking heads / social media videos of kids etc, etc.
 
Alex Jagger

Alex Jagger

Location
Bangkok
Richard Lodeman said:
Current annoyance is the BBC Olympic round up at 7.30pm.

Having worked all day what I want to see is highlights of the day and the athletes actually competing. Not, as seems to be currently the case, about 20% competing and 80% presenter / talking heads / social media videos of kids etc, etc.
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I might head over to the like thread to express my delight that they recruited Johnny Vegas to commentate the Gymnastics though.
 
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