Overused Words and Phrases

Proof that the NSA is really useful afterall:

"The" is the most commonly used word overall, followed by "be," "to," "of," and, "a," "in," "that," "have," and "I," according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

On the list of top 25 nouns, "time" is followed by other movement indicators: "year" is in third place; "day" is fifth; and "week" is No. 17.

The dictionary used the Oxford English Corpus -- a research project into English in the 21st century -- to come up with the lists.

Among nouns, "person" is ranked at No. 2, with "man" at No. 7 and "woman" at No. 14. "Child" appears at No. 12.

"Government" appears at No. 20 while "war," at No. 49, trumps "peace," which did not make the top 100.

The list of top 25 nouns: time, person, year, way, day, thing, man, world, life, hand, part, child, eye, woman, place, work, week, case, point, government, company, number, group, problem, fact.

So I thought this was rather interesting for a few different points - first, that someone (probably a team of 4-5 people) actually was paid to research this; two, that there is a way to record this information (NSA phone taps? Or just a lot of people wearing microphones); three, that when you think about it - the writers of this information probably just made it up. How many beers does it take to come up with a list like this? In my list of most used words, I'm putting "um" at the top for all of the presentations and meetings that I have to sit through.

I did a web search for "most overused words" and found a survey on rateitall.com that has a bunch of phrases that I do actually use on a regular basis. Among them:

• "(Fillintheblank) Rules!!"
• "(Fillintheblank) Sucks!"
• "You have no idea what you're talking about"
• "You don't get it"
• "You know what I'm sayin?".

Overused work phrases that I don't really care for include:

• Take that offline
• Work smarter, not harder
• Think outside the box
• "Ping" ________ (someone)
• Cutting Edge
• Send me an action item
• Any other overused quotes from Office Space

English language is funny like that..... Being in Japan and China, I learned quickly how dependent we are as a business culture on phrases that you have to have prior knowledge in order to understand.....

**Yawn**.... time to go nap.

Song of the Day - Still Elvis around here today. For all of the AI fans, pull out In the Ghetto to hear a real singer perfect it. I don't think Taylor did that well with it, but then again - it's Elvis! There is only one other person that should be allowed to sing Elvis in public (or non-karaoke.... half of my prepared karaoke songs are Elvis).

Video of the Day - Jurassic Park was on last night - can you believe that movie came out in 1993? I'm getting old. I remember seeing that movie in the theatre in high school and laughing at some of the dumbest things that we would say during the movie or point out. Chad and I were really bad at that during movies. Still a reason why people hate going to movies with me.

Webpage of the Day - This was kind of strange... a Pabst Blue Ribbon commercial causes a resort hotel to evacuate 35 guests at 12:30 in the morning. I knew that stuff sucked and should not be sold!!