I have two that I can think of offhand. It’s not that I get some sort of skeevy feeling from hearing them. I just think they are truly pretentious words that I would like nothing better than to never hear them in use again.

The first of those words is bespoke.

”Bespoke” basically means custom or personalized or catered to a specific person. It’s a word that I’d never heard of before about five or so years ago and now it’s everywhere. Bespoke suits. Bespoke marketing plans. Bespoke menus. Can’t we just use custom? Was there something wrong with the word that someone had to come up with something just that much more ridiculous sounding?

The second word is zeitgeist.

This one gets me because, to be honest, I really cannot define it. It gets used a lot in relation to popular culture and mass media – something “enters the zeitgeist” – which makes me think it has something to do with mass cultural acceptance. But I don’t care to confirm it because it, like bespoke, it has that air of pretentiousness that makes me want to just avoid it completely.

Do any words bug you?