"Very"
It's a crutch word when I want to be lazy instead of flexing my brain and finding something more linguistically savvy. The word has little meaning beyond "more" and it seems overtly childish to me to use it.
Like, what the fuck does "very pretty" even really mean? That something is somehow prettier pretty? Does that mean I should stack them for maximum effect? Like "very very" or "very very very" or "very very very very very very very..." You get the point.
This is why English has numerous words with similar intentions. Instead of "very pretty" say "beautiful." Instead of "very big" say "gargantuan." Instead of "very fast" say "expedient." The word "very" is meant for children who don't have a good grasp of the language, it's not meant for properly educated adults.
(In spite of saying this though, I sometimes find myself being very lazy and using it anyway.
)
"Offended"
I loathe using this word because it's been used by so many to justify why free speech should be curtailed one way or another. I can be offended, and that's perfectly fine--that's my problem, not anyone else's problem. Forcing others to address my emotions regardless of whether or not they even care about them is totalitarian--it's to put myself above any and all others. I would still like to use this word when I find a thing that I dislike and that upsets me, but I cannot really in good conscience use it... Because the Internet in general has so badly butchered using this word that it's basically synonymous with being a petulant child that throws temper tantrums.
"Privilege"
Another one of those words the Internet has permanently ruined. Privilege is now automatically seen as a bad thing now, that automatically disqualifies a person from having a voice or say in what is going on around them in some communities. In others, it's now a running joke that a person has "fork privilege" or "food privilege" or other privileges like that. The word has been so badly mutated that it's almost irrevocably related to race or sex, in spite of the fact that the word... Has no relation to those concepts, at all. This is a modern phenomenon.
It... Has no use. Everything is a privilege now--even things that people have no choice in. Like do you have white skin? You have privilege! It doesn't matter whether you live in a trailer park, barely getting by and drowning up to your eyeballs in debt, or if you're a super-rich fortune 500 80 year old. You have the same amount of privilege. Somehow.
"Privilege" is just the new, politically correct way of saying "you deserve more/less rights because of your race/sex/sexuality/gender/space nebula status/et cetera, irrelevant of your life's circumstances."
Sadly, because of that, I have to remove that word from my general every day lexicon. If I ever have kids, I won't be able to tell them that getting candy is a privilege--because that word doesn't hold its original meaning anymore.
