3:07pm July 23, 2015

Do other people find certain words just randomly irritating?

I don’t mean like words that bite my brain, which is a term I came up with for words that, instead of conveying meaning to me, just create a little explosion in my head that hurts and that makes it impossible for me to understand the word easily even if I technically know what it means sort of. Those words, there’s at least a reason they bug me. (For instance: heteronormative. I kind of know what it’s supposed to mean, but just looking at it creates a blank space in my head that then explodes and hurts my brain, no matter how many times I see it I’m never desensitized. No, this doesn’t mean stop using it. Please use whatever words you want to. I know how hard it is to come up with new words when you feel like people are restricting your use of language, so I don’t want to do that to anyone.)

No, I’m talking about words like “mouthfeel”. I know what mouthfeel means, but the word bugs the shit out of me and there’s really no good reason for it at all. (I don’t normally talk about things like this because I don’t want people to stop using words on my account. But I had to come up with an example, and that’s a good one.)

It reminds me of misophonia in a way – it’s the same irritated anger for no good reason. It just isn’t related to a sound, specifically, but the word itself.

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