Bastardizations of English.

Words and Phrases That Make My Skin Crawl, revised 2008 edition. (Please forgive any repeats; I have ongoing battles with certain aspects of the English language in use.)

1. When people refer to flip-flops as "thongs." Obviously, if they'd ever attended a state university during the era in which it was popular for sorority girls to wear low-riders and show their G-stringed buttcracks in lecture hall, they'd know why I am opposed to their misuse of this word--but invariably it's someone older than 30 who's throwing around "thong" like nobody's business. Please, stop.
2. The word "germane," which is being used as a popular replacement for "relevant," an infinitely better word that accomplishes the same purpose without making you sound like you've recently immigrated from the reference section of the Law Library. I think I developed a real hatred of "germane" during this graduate program, when it was, like, THE hip word among dorky Professors of Education. I started to take tallies of the number of times this word was uttered during each lecture I attended, but there were too many to bother adding up.
3. The word "ubiquitous," which, I've decided, is actually just a keyword that people throw into their otherwise rudimentary vocabularies in order to make themselves sound (temporarily) more intelligent--that is, until the recipient of their bombast realizes they've misused it entirely. (I'm tipping my hat to you, Chicago Trustafarian.)
4. The term "quick and dirty," as in "This is just a quick and dirty explanation of Oregon's Student Free Speech statute." Why? Because it sounds raunchily sexual to everybody except the oblivious and be-frocked 50-something professor who keeps repeating it offhandedly during lecture.
(Have I mentioned this before? I think so.)