[redrunner]

My number 1 most irritating phrase: "CHANGE"

[George Smiley]

11. “It is what it is.”

[SolidWood]

#1 Change
#2 Hope
#3 Yes we can
#4 Obama

[the_devils_advocate_666]

11. Oh really?

[redrunner]

how bout “Bush’s Fault”

[NetSurfer]

“At the end of the day” IS all-time annoying! It should be banned from the English language.

[eleni121]

Add “My friends” every time he opened his mouth-— what an irritating McCainism.

[Verginius Rufus]

"My friends"
"Neo-cons"
"Failed Bush administration policies"

[CE2949BB]

“Touch base.”

[Robert A Cook PE]

12 But the truth of the matter is ....

[DannyTN]

At the end of the day, I personally, don’t think this list is even fairly unique. With all due respect, at this moment in time, they absolutely could have come up with a more irritating list than this. This list is a nightmare, NOT. It’s not rocket science, and it’s obvious they didn’t work on this 24/7. This list was quite boring and shoundn’t of been published.

[davisfh]

prevenTAtive as opposed to preventive. Yes, I know that prevenTAtive is in the dictionary, sad to say. There are many, many more just like that. But then, it's progressive language, you understand.

[cgbg]

My most hated word:

"Stakeholders"

Usually whoever says the word is trying to &^%$ you over.

[Revolting cat!]

The most irritating: duplicate post (such as this one!)

[GOPJ]

Correct Pronounced as: CO-rect!

[mysto]

"Change you can believe in" is definitely #1. Also on my list of irritating words and phrases:

"Politically incorrect"

"Progressive" (to describe liberals)

"Spread the wealth around"

"My friends"

"Bailout"

And the newest addition to the list:

"Office of the President-Elect"

[mollynme]

I would like to add “I mean” to that list. People starting a sentence with “I mean” when they haven’t said anything yet that needs to be clarified are very annoying and usually sports figures.

[smokingfrog]

“team player”

[TruthWillWin]

#1 most irritating (and overused)....Win-Win. Or Win-Win-Win.

#2. Out of the box.

[loungitude]

“Quite frankly...”

[CaliGirlGodHelpMe]

I agree that many of the above phrases, but “you need to” tops the irritant list for me. It drives me nuts when, instead of “have to”, “must”, “should”, “ought”, or whatever it is they really mean, people use the imprecise and bossy-sounding “need to” in a misguided attempt to give more weight and authority to their words. As in, “You need to come with me, Sir”. Why not just say “Please come with me, Sir.”? Not only more courteous and professional-sounding, but it has the incidental advantage of being precisely what is meant.

See now, you shouldn’t have got me going...