From a fecund field ripe with vexation, 200 words have been plucked for your aggravation here.
Some samples:
empower and empowered
for all intensive purposes (instead of “for all intents and purposes”)
get our arms around (a project)
if you will
innovative
lay (instead of “lie”)
It’s all good.
mission critical
partner (as a verb)
sustainable
transparency
win-win for everyone
stakeholder (when not killing vampires)
mind-blowing
A few of my own:
rhetoric
disrespect (as a verb)
trajectory (when used to describe anything other than the progress of a missile)
generous pastoral response (when used to excuse a person doing something he shouldn’t)
Holy Spirit (when used to excuse a church doing something it shouldn’t)
mission shaped
missional
prophetic social justice making
continuous culture of innovation
generous culture of stewardship
pursue excellence
Emergent Village
distinctives (as a plural noun)
telling our stories
advocacy work
strive to make a difference
raise awareness
faith communities
people of faith
activist
I don’t think there are any on the first list that I haven’t heard for several years (in some cases, many, many years). There are a couple from your list that I’m not familiar with – yet. An irritating one that is very popular with the US military (and has been picked up by the CF) is “operationalizing”. Of course, the US military has been famous for “izing” words for decades.
One phrase I despise is “going forward” when used in conjunction with a future planned action. As in, “we will do such and such going forward”. Time only moves in one direction – at least in my experience. What alternative is there is going forward? Going side-ways? Going backward? Going down? Going up?
However, I’ve have no quarrel with many of the words/phrases in the above lists. Language evolves… Some of those listed, like the deceptive use of “generous pastoral response” and blasphemous attributions to the Holy Spirit, also set my teeth on edge.
That reminds me: even worse, I hear “what’s our go forward position” quite a lot in work.
I’d like to add:
“arguably” as a qualifier. He is “arguably the best golf player this season”.
“Across the globe” drives me crazy lately, and I’m seeing it everywhere, for some reason. I must have missed a memo. Anyway, “globe” seems a bit poetic for regular speech or writing, and if a globe is shaped the way I think it is, “around” would be a better adverb than “across.” Or are we now surrounded by flat-earth theories? Anyway, I change it to “around the world” every time it comes up in my editing job, and it seems to come up on every page lately.
Then there’s “over time,” which I guess is similar to “going forward.” “As costs increase over time.” I suppose there’s a way costs can increase outside of time, or while time stands still, but I think most readers know that as costs increase, somewhere a clock is ticking.
I have a more pedestrian pet peeve:
its, it’s
their there they’re
They are not interchangeable!!! It’s one thing to make a mistake on a comment when you are typing a mile a minute, but when I come across it in a blog post or a quiz on Facebook, I can’t help but think the writer had time to look it up and get it right!
How about lose and loose? I think they’re used corrrectly less than 50% of the time.
Erm… well, I have to think about those words every time I write them, so that’s not likely to be something that I complain about…..
My pet – “I could care less” which should be – “I couldn’t care less”. And my all time favourite – “yous”.
One of mine: “Leverage” (verb)- and particularly when pronounced in the north American way (levver, rhyming with clever) by people who are not remotely American.