Pet Peeves – Do You Have Any?
Pet peeves, yes we all seem to have them. Some are worse than others. Here are a few examples chosen randomly, however some of them are pet peeves of mine. I’ll put a * out from the ones that annoy me:
• Drivers who don’t use a turn signal*
• Noisy eaters*
• People who take up two parking spaces*
• Those that don’t RSVP to an event
• Typing in all caps*
• Things sticking out of drawers*
• Commercials that are much louder than TV shows
• Restaurants with a “no smoking” section just a few feet away from the smoking section*
• Those who always ask you what time it is
• Chewing gum on the sidewalk
And the list goes on, see GetAnnoyed.com for more.
Pet peeve is defined as:
• Merriam-Webster – a frequent subject of complaint, something that annoys or bothers a person very much
• Urban Dictionary – an irritating experience caused by others in which you cannot control
• Dictionary.com – a particular and often continual annoyance
• Vocabulary.com – says a peeve is an annoyance…something someone can never resist complaining about…like driving slowly in the fast lane. If something like that drives you crazy and you have to yap about it, it’s a pet peeve. Pet peeves tend to be smaller issues
According to Josh Mosey – As a phrase, “pet peeve” is fairly young, dating back to the early 1900’s…“Peeve” is related to the older word “peevish,” which dates back to the late 14th century and means “perverse, capricious, or silly.” The word itself is of an uncertain origin, but could be from the Latin perversus, which spawned the words perverse and reversed…It isn’t a big leap to see how something that annoys us–a pet peeve–is a perversion of how we think things should be (like being annoyed if someone puts the fork on the right instead of the left of a plate).
Per Josh’s example about the fork, he offers this easy way to remember where the silverware goes so you won’t annoy someone – Remember that fork and left both have 4 letters, while spoon, knife, glass and right have 5 letters. And since it gets lonely by itself, put the napkin under the fork.
Word Detective says this about pet peeve – For a word that expresses a universal (one presumes) human emotion, “peeve” is a remarkably recent coinage, first appearing in print as a verb only in 1908 and a noun (the thing that peeves) in 1911. Both “peeves,” however, arose as what linguists call “back-formations” of the much older term “peevish,” meaning “ill-tempered,” that first appeared in the late 14th century.
Do you have any pet peeves? #petpeeve Click To TweetWhat are your pet peeves?
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