Silliness in Words

There are phrases which annoy me. Let me rephrase that... there are phrases which amuse me while also irking me.

"At the end of the day" is one of them. It's senseless. It precedes a prediction and it is most often used by political commentators. What it means is "I think this is how it will turn out."

"I have half a mind to..." I usually say, in response, "Then you are twice as smart as I thought."

So, I thought I would do a little research (which just means "I should Google that") on trite phrases. I found this site:
https://sites.google.com/site/editandwrite/clichesandtritephrases.

Many of the most annoying phrases I could think of can be found there. But it's a site that caters to writers (or "wannabe" writers... like bloggers).

My father used such phrases... one of them was "Do as I say, not as I do." But it was an empty phrase in his case because he never told me to do something he wouldn't. It is hard to argue with a man who walks the walk (another trite phrase which annoys me).

Nowadays (a trite word meaning "of late"), the verbification of nouns bugs the heck out of me. You know what I mean: "incentivise", "verbify", etc. By the way, etc. is an abbreviation of et cetera which is latin for "and other things." I often see it written as "ect" which is almost as annoying as "I could care less." The writers of that phrase really mean "I couldn't care less." When I see this, I think... lazy thinker... and write them off.