There are certain words that have the ability to make us cringe in the same way that sounds make us recoil when listening to a dentist’s drill or nails being dragged across a blackboard. At work, a group of us compare notes on Vile Vocabulary from time to time. So far, one person absolutely detests the word ‘pamphlet’. We all think that ‘moist’ sounds rather unsavoury, and the word making us heave today is none other than ‘chunks’. Putting the three together in a cohesive sentence, we’ve come up with :

‘I’m picking up moist chunks of pamphlet.’ Hmm, what superb imagery.

In relation to another Vile Word, someone recently told me that a friend’s mother thought she was really hip when she said “he’s a real see-you-next-Wednesday!” The daughter had to explain that the saying is actually “see-you-next-Tuesday,” and why.