Pet Peeves

We all have them, and now it's my turn to share some of mine! Dictionary.com defines pet peeve as: "a particular and often continual annoyance". Man, I could fill volumes with things that cause me "continual annoyance"! Here are a couple that have been on my mind recently.

This one showed itself again the other morning while I was watching one of those "home fix it" shows. The hosts were fixing up an animal rescue facility. One of the hosts looked right at the camera and said: "This place is literally bursting at the seams." I have news for him, it may be overcrowded, but it is not LITERALLY bursting at the seams. It seems that people sometimes don't understand what literally means. Again from Dictionary.com: "actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy". So, since the building wasn't actually bursting, was the host describing the situation "without exaggeration or inaccuracy"? I'd say he did not.

Amazing: “causing great surprise or sudden wonder”. I hear the word amazing used almost daily to describe such things as a car, someone’s new haircut or what they had for lunch that day. I have a difficult time thinking that a corned beef sandwich on rye bread caused someone great surprise or sudden wonder. It’s not that I mind the word itself, but it’s the overuse of amazing that bothers me.


I listen to a certain podcast on a regular basis. The podcast originates from Southern California and apparently just about EVERYTHING in So Cal is “amazing”. On a recent episode of the podcast I counted the use of the word amazing nine times in the first ten minutes. I stopped counting after that. The female host had gone to a restaurant over the weekend that was “amazing”. The food at that restaurant was “amazing”. The male host went on a date and his sandwich was “amazing” then played lazer tag and it was... amazing!

I have one word for those that think everything is AMAZING: Thesaurus. Here a few words I got from the thesaurus you might want to try in place of amazing: astounding, bewildering, breathtaking, extraordinary, impressive, marvelous, miraculous, spectacular, staggering, startling, striking, stunning, stupefying, stupendous, wonderful, wondrous.

It's literally amazing how much better I feel now that I got that off my chest!