Like, whatever

A poll from the Marist Institute has revealed that the word or phrase Americans find most annoying is “whatever”. With 47 percent of those polled finding it the most annoying, it easily beat the next closest – “you know” – at 25 percent.

One of the problems with the survey is that the phrases were preselected – the people surveyed could not select any word in the language. The website Visual Thesaurus polled its users earlier in the year, and found that the word “moist” was much more disliked. Whilst their sample was perhaps more biased (users of a word website are sure to be more likely to have preferences of words they like and dislike than the general public), it did allow the users to select any word in the English language.

So what words, if any, annoy you? Do you say no to whatever? Or perhaps you hate moist? Are there words in other languages you like or dislike? My favourite in Spanish so far has to be helado (ice cream)!