My old boss used to call his mobile phone his smartphone. Like 'oh has anyone seen my smartphone?', it made me cringe every time!
It does sound very pretentious indeed. Like when people refer to an ‘iPhone’ (whether in general – “you could just record it on an iPhone” - or their own personal one), when you could do that with pretty much any modern phone. Same goes for people who refer to their ‘Range Rover’ (or whatever), rather than just ‘car’ (unless, maybe, they have several vehicles and genuinely need to specify which one they’ll need to use). Nobody would ever go to 'the Zanussi fridge' to get some milk. It’s all very Alan Partridge.
Not exactly the same thing, but it always grates on me when people say ‘England’ when they so clearly mean ‘the UK’. “Until you see the living conditions in many parts of the world, we don’t realise just how fortunate we are in England”. Right, because, as soon as you cross the border and reach Monmouth or Jedburgh, it’s guaranteed famine, drought, civil war, howling in the streets, long-drop mud latrines and a life-expectancy of 28….
All this has brought it back to me that we had a chest in my parent's house called the bedding box.
Do you mean the ottoman, perchance?!
DH says “ I need some new clothing “ instead of clothes. Drives me mad.
You are both being U, just say raiment or garb like normal people.
Only vulgar sorts would ever deign to refer to individual apparel in such a common manner!
My Nan used to refer to her fancy outfits as 'costumes'. As a child I was always disappointed that she never arrived dressed as Yogi Bear or something.
Does anybody else remember the episode of Call The Midwife when the younger ones, covered from head to toe for their fitness classes, were accused of ‘cavorting in their combinations’ ?! Every time the GTech cleaner advert comes on and the bloke describes it as two machines ‘in one powerful combination’, I always instantly imagine him dressed up as a vacuuming superhero version of Mr Motivator!
I think a lot of it is generational. My dad can’t seem to say he will ‘phone’ or ‘call’ me- it has to be telephone. He also calls chocolate etc ‘confectionary’ which irrationally annoys me.
Does he go really old-fashioned and talk about ‘telephoning to somebody’, like they did in Enid Blyton? Confectionery is far too informally colloquial for me – has to be comestibles!
If there are no interesting popular beat-combos performing at the hop in my local palais (so much ghastly rubbish in the hit parade these days), I simply purchase some petroleum and drive in my motor car to the local picture house to dig the latest flick. Nobody ever thinks me strange for doing this – must be a perquisite of senescence!
Cracking thread, Gromit OP!!
