Over the last few years, I’ve noticed the rise of the word "Basically" being used in sentences. I was listening to Radio 4 the other day and even an American was using it in the same way we do!

Why are people saying this word all the time? It seems they are using it to punctuate their sentences?

Does anyone else pick up on people using it?

I used to work with someone who would say "Sort of thing" at the end of EVERY sentence! He wasn't a young guy either. I think he was about 60!

It was a total distraction from what the guy was saying ... I once tried to count how many times he said this phrase in a meeting. I gave up at 55!

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If you think the world is going to ****, you have seen nothing yet!

Kind of similar to the people who use the word "like" excessively.

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I like wines that cut through my palate. Some wines spread outwards. They fool you. Those are modern wines. You taste them, and three minutes later, you say: "Not bad, but there's no depth." When I taste a wine, I like it to cut through my palate.

To be fair, at the end of the day, people should basically just speak however they like.

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Bite my shiny metal butt!

Like, yeah, basically...

I must admit I'm guilty of this. All my friends noticed it a few years ago, but I think I'm finally starting to kick the habit. You just have to take it a day at a time...

At least it's better than these speech patterns:

- When people rise the intonation of their voice at the end of an utterance, thus making it sound like a question.

- When people say "cauter" instead of "quarter" and "sicth" instead of "sixth" (Might ruffle a few feathers with that one)

- When people say "could of" instead of "could have"

I could go on, but I have a broad Sheffield accent and therefore miss the definite article out of sentences all the time, so I suppose it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

"To be quite honest", basically, I think, at the end of the day, its catching - like!

I think this has been attributed to the large number of Australian soaps that where and for some, still are on British TV.

How about people saying "axed" instead of "asked"? This one seems to be on the rise. Its from America I think and even been referred to on Futurama!

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If you think the world is going to ****, you have seen nothing yet!

A real pet hate of mine - more irritating than the Krankies!

Cretinous potential Jerry Springer audience member: "If you axe me ....."

Me: "Oh I'd love to axe you ....... Right in your stupid, sloppy Americanised slang using mouth."


There's no need for it, the word is "ask" not "axe", which from my semi-witty little skit above is fairly self evident. Raise other peoples perception of you, don't appear to have a marginal grasp of the English language and use the correct word in the correct tense and we'll all get along just fine.


Spleen vented.

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I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

axed instead of asked always reminds me of joe pesci

Sounds like you have a similar opinion to me of this kind of thing. Maybe we should sit in a pub and discuss this very loudly while two eaves dropping girls make comments about us

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If you think the world is going to ****, you have seen nothing yet!

Ha ha! I think if we did it again they'd explode in a fit of self righteous fury and beat us mercilessly about the head with fair trade rafia work bags. God forbid we actually voice opinions that don't strictly adhere to the lefty student mind set.

On the other hand we could bait them one more time..........

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I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

That one annoys me more than any other. It just makes NO sense.

Also, people who write 'everyday' (meaning 'ordinary') instead of 'every day'.

Ok lak basiclee lak ah don lak rilly care innit. You know lak am lak a person rite? I can say wo a lak.

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Treadmills get you nowhere

I don't over use the word 'basically' but I DO over use the word 'obviously'!!!

I work in a call centre so regularly have to listen to my taped telephone calls....once I counted 21 'obviously's' in one call that in itself was only 7 minutes long!

It was so obvious listening to the call but I obviously never realised during the call as obviously I would have stopped using the word obviously in every other sentence as obviously it was starting to sound a bit odd!!

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Behind every successful man is an exhausted woman!!
Shiesh in Action!!
♥ Don't cry because it's over! Smile because it happened! ♥

I find it extremely infuriating, it's cropping up more and more regularly.

I've noticed the numbers of people that cannot hack adverbs is increasing.



P.S: One of my favourites is: "At the end of the day..."

Got to love the cliches.

At the end of the day... it gets dark.

She's a dark horse, isn't she? Who? Black Beauty...

Basically, well it's likea kindof obvious really, innit?
It's a short-hand cliche, geddit?

If you were using obviously that frequently on calls I'm surprised it wasn't pointed out to you before. I've trained in a few call centres, and this is one of the banned words - I'll explain what I mean. There are three negative words that should be avoided because of what they really mean.

Obviously = You're stupid, everyone knows that.
Actually = You're wrong.
Basically = I'll dumb it dwn for you, you're stupid.

While not many customers would complain about use of these words, it does seem to have some kind of subliminal effect. Try avoiding these words Shiesh, and see if you get an easier time on your calls!

K x