University of Oxford researchers have compiled a list of the “Top 10 Most Annoying Phrases”.
The expressions judged to cause the greatest verbal fatigue include “at the end of the day”, “I personally” and “fairly unique”. Other irritating phrases are “With all due respect” and “it’s not rocket science”.
The University keeps track of overused buzzwords in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which comprises books, papers, magazines, broadcast and internet resources.
The list was published by Jeremy Butterfield, the senior researcher at All Souls College, in his book “Damp Squid”.
