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What really grinds your gears?

18 lurkers | 185 watchers

Seratonin Jan 2017 9:52am, 20 Jan 2017 13,850 posts	Quote Pin Seratonin ^^ That winds me up too Will. I always thought that driving with earphones would be illegal aside from that fact that it is stupid, ill-considered and dangerous.
CharlieP Jan 2017 10:19am, 20 Jan 2017 626 posts	Quote Pin CharlieP Also see people driving at night with massive tablet-sized colour screens stuck to their windscreens.
CharlieP Jan 2017 10:22am, 20 Jan 2017 627 posts	Quote Pin CharlieP Also (going back to "message me"/"inbox me"), would Facebook please note that "friend" is not a verb, and therefore there's no such word as "unfriend".
CharlieP Jan 2017 12:39pm, 20 Jan 2017 628 posts	Quote Pin CharlieP What's the name of that phenomenon, where, after you encounter something for the first time, you instantly seem to come across it again? bbc.co.uk (01:15)
ThorntonRunner Jan 2017 1:03pm, 20 Jan 2017 1,277 posts	Quote Pin ThorntonRunner Sorry CP - but unfriend has been a verb since at least the 17th century and is used by Shakespeare. Quote from an article about this: "It’s in the seventeenth century that the word ‘unfriend’ becomes a verb. The OED provides a letter from Thomas Fuller in 1659 as the earliest citation: ‘I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.’ This is clearly the same as the modern usage, though Facebook is still a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s eye at this time. But ‘unfriend’ was used earlier than Fuller, as William Shakespeare attests. Several of his plays use the word ‘unfriended’ to denote somebody who has lost their friend or friends. One notable example is from Twelfth Night: ‘Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger, / Unguided and unfriended, often prove / Rough and unhospitable’. In King Lear, too, Shakespeare uses the word: ‘Sir, will you, with those infirmities she owes—. / Unfriended, new adopted to our hate’."
CharlieP Jan 2017 1:35pm, 20 Jan 2017 629 posts	Quote Pin CharlieP OK, so not "not a verb", more an archaic verb like so many others in Shakespeare's canon. Did it appear in any but the most encyclopaedic dictionaries before Facebook decided to use it, not defriend, as the reverse of "Add Friend"?
ThorntonRunner Jan 2017 3:11pm, 20 Jan 2017 1,278 posts	Quote Pin ThorntonRunner to be fair - I hate the phrase as well;)
Eynsham Red Jan 2017 5:58pm, 20 Jan 2017 1,299 posts	Quote Pin Eynsham Red I don't like the term either, but language is a pretty fluid thing and if it hadn't changed, developed and broken the rules that we lay down for it, then we would probably still be using thees and thous. CP, from this and previous posts, I guess that you must be a HUGE Facebook fan
Fitz Jan 2017 6:42am, 21 Jan 2017 1,665 posts	Quote Pin Fitz The driving with earphones thing... I think most of the time they're not listening to music, they're using the earphones as a hands-free phoning tool, which I suppose is much better all round than trying to hold a phone while driving. Let's be grateful for small mercies.
Jono. Jan 2017 7:03am, 21 Jan 2017 5,003 posts	Quote Pin Jono. I don't like Trump, so I'll smash a window! tossers (NB I don't like him either - I have not broken anything)