Irritating Cliches

Researchers at Oxford University have compiled a top ten list of the most irritating cliches. They are in descending order: 1. "At the end of the day"; 2. "Fairly unique"; 3. "I personally"; 4. "At this moment in time"; 5 "With all due respect"; 6. "Absolutely"; 7 "It's a nightmare"; 8. "Shouldn't of"; 9. "24/7"; 10. "It's not rocket science". One cliche I find especially irritating that surprisingly failed to crack the top ten is "Throw (him or her) under the bus." This monstrosity has quite naturally found its way into presidential election postmortems, as in unnamed McCain campaign operatives "throwing Sarah Palin under the bus" for her role in last week's defeat.