Thought people here might find this entertaining:
There are a couple of my pet peeves on the list, and some that I don’t see problems with. Interesting in any event.
I thought there were only seven words you don’t say, this is a heck of a lot more than seven.
Thirteen if you’ve been at sea, according to Mr. Krabs.
A few of those words have value. For the rest of them, we should be able to play Slugbug with the users.
“Words You Don’t Say”, my arse. I’ll just tackle two:
“Input”? How peevish and blinkered. When was the contributor born? The article’s author, at least, might have bothered to check (Merriam-Webster is reliable, dear) and find - and point out - that the first known published use of the word dates back to 1888, well before computers. I was certainly using it before the computer age. And using “sniffed” for “said” is a time-honored usage in English letters, an artistic compression that stands for “sniffed and said”, or “said and sniffed”, or “said with a sniff”. Suggesting that it betrays the writer’s bias rather than revealing the character’s state of mind is nonsense, just the ill-considered chattering of a creatively impoverished and intellectually rigid scribbler. Much as it might seem she has decided to bemantle herself with imagined authority (not even stating her own mind so much as hiding behind the skirts of others’ peeves, at times utterly uninformed ones at that), Ms. Nolan shall not be dictating discursive fashion in my world unless it be to gain my mockery for her trouble. She can take her Emperor’s New Clothes, go, and p*ss off. She will find a better audience among her fellows, for whom language is for getting groceries.
So there.
ah, What is Beer?
I didn’t see two of my pet peeves:
Using “decimated” to mean “destroyed”
Using “nauseous” to mean “nauseated”
Redwolf
I ain’t so good at English but I’m more concerned by those folks who run around saying “off ten.” “Off ten” what? TV “journalists” seem to love that word, “Off ten we see this type of tornadic activity in this region.” Is that state route 10 or Interstate 10?
That’s a regional thing. “Off ten” is how “often” is pronounced out west. I never heard it said any differently until I moved to North Carolina.
Redwolf
I can’t agree with you on nauseous/nauseated, Audrey. There’s a good excuse to use the word “logomachy”, eh? 
Well, they mean different things. If you’re “nauseated” you’re sick to your stomach. If you’re “nauseous,” you make OTHER people “nauseated.”
Redwolf
And so the logomachy begins! 
For your use of “nauseous”, I use “nauseating” (or even the clumsy “nausea-inducing”, depending on need); for me “nauseous” and “nauseated” have always been interchangeable aside from the difference in nuance: the first is simply a feeling as a condition of being, and in this case the second of course implies being on the receiving end of a cause.
“Nauseated” serves as either participle adjective or transitive verb depending on how you use it, such as in the rather idiotic but nevertheless grammatically sound “I was feeling nauseated because it nauseated me.” But if I heard instead “…it was nauseous,” to me that means whatever “it” is, it was poised to do the upchucking, not be the cause of it.
The quibble about “data” amused me. Many of us here are I.T. professionals. How many people use the word “datum” outside of a technical context? Yes, the word is borrowed, or stolen, from the Latin, but it is now an English word. You might as well insist on “hippopotami”. That is acceptable whimsy.
Better to insist that “data” in common usage is both singular and plural, like sheep, fish, rice and thrips. (And, curse it, I always thought that it was thrip.)
What does logomachy mean?
I lost the will to read when I hit the 24/7 list. Anybody who dislikes so many words needs to go and live in a cave, preferably in close proximity to something nauseatingly nauseous.
I actually enjoy a certain amount of bad use of language. It can be very entertaining, and sometimes more expressive than correct English. I also aim to only maintain one or two linguistic peeves at any given time, so that I can fully concentrate on those. Currently, I focus all my disdain on ‘hardwired’, when used with reference to human behaviour & brain ‘science’.
As a High-Functioning Autistic, with a High-Functioning Autistic family, I am aware that many human behaviours relating to empathy are lacking in autistics (though they can be learned) but in neurotypicals are hard-wired.
…For want of a better term. Have you a better term?
I think the trouble is not so much improper use of the language, but poor use that is repeated. My English school teacher once said “E. E. Cummings broke the rules of the English language skillfully in his art, you (the class) are no E.E.Cummings, follow the rules.” Rather than being a creative use of words many have become support for poor writing.
Often on the radio I hear people reading off their prepared speeches and it seems that the people have little substance to convey and use many words to do it. Cliché like “in the wake of” used in place of “after” is one example that occurs often on NPR. I have noticed in military, opinion, news, and technical speech that all have their differences and quirks appropriate to their field, but all seem to suffer when it looks like a creative writing assignment that some student tried to stretch to the minimum number of characters when they ran out of things to say.
Perhaps inherent, heritable trait, genetically determined, or innate could be used where more appropriate. Hard-wired seems to be overly unchanging and ignores the plasticity of mind. Many of the things labeled Hard-wired have some nurture component to it and “hard-wired” often seems to provide a poor model to the understanding of how the mind works. Regardless, solder is usually not used on “wetware”.
Isn’t it that case that “hard-wired” is not so much “providing a model of how the mind works” as “using a metaphor with a common currency”? In this sense it follows a similar sort of context as “ball-park figures” (baseball) “professional foul” (soccer) or “back to square one” (snakes and ladders).
“Inherent” and “innate” are reasonable substitutes, perhaps, but they don’t carry the connotation of it being something mechanical, (and difficult to “fix”) which I feel is important.
The alternative words are off the top of my head and this is not really my area, perhaps it is more intrinsic than innate? As poorly as these words fit so does the term hard-wired as it is often used. I wonder what good the metaphor really does when few have a great understanding of hard wiring something. It is kind of self reinforcing, people use it because other people do, but it is lacking in clarity and accuracy.
As to my reason for saying it is a poor model, I mention that as I have seen colorful language entering scientific journals and I think what one sees in gains in marketing decreases clarity. Every time I read about a “moonlighting proteins*” I keep imagining a globular protein as a liqueur store security cop. It is bad enough that many things are published in English only without adding idioms, metaphors, and other phrases to make understanding more difficult.
*Meaning multiple use or multiple purpose.
As a side note, if I was an English teacher, one assignment I would have is to hand out a newspaper article and have the students rewrite it in the minimum number of words retaining all of the facts. Like Perl golf for news.My problem with hard-wired is precisely the fact that it does suggest something mechanical. Our minds and brains are not at all like computers, but delightfully malleable, adaptable and easy to mislead. The term ‘hard-wiring’ is often used in articles and books which defend unattractive sides of human behaviour e.g. male sexual promiscuity/aggressiveness, or which advocate a return to greater gender inequality.
As ID10t says: “Many of the things labeled hard-wired have some nurture component to it and ‘hard-wired’ often seems to provide a poor model to the understanding of how the mind works.” Science writers like to pretend that the brain is known territory, but it actually isn’t…
Well… As a computer professional, I find computers very easy to mislead. Not very malleable, I agree… but wait! You CAN hit a computer with a hammer… but maybe that’s not what you meant? Was that a metaphor?
I agree the brain isn’t known territory. On the other hand, working with computers does, in some ways, provide clues to how the brain works. For instance, one particular type of aphasia seems to resemble the case of a computer disk running out of index space, while retaining plenty of data storage. For people presenting an argument, definitely, using the term “hard-wired” should not serve to make any kind of case. In common parlance as a loose metaphor, I have no problem with its use - and agree that people using it as a pseudo-scientific weasel-word should be picked up on (or picked upon).