“WHATEVER!”

Americans are totally annoyed by the use of “whatever”in conversations.

The popular slacker term of indifference was found “most annoying in conversation” by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released Wednesday.

#1 .“Whatever” easily beat out #2. “you know,” which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were #3. “anyway” (at 7 percent), #4. “it is what it is” (11 percent) and #5. “at the end of the day” (2 percent).

“Whatever” — pronounced “WHAT’-ehv-errr” when exasperated, irritated
or annoyed — is an expression with staying power. Immortalized in song
by Nirvana (“oh well, whatever, never mind”) in 1991, popularized by the
Valley girls in “Clueless” later that decade, it is still commonly used,
often by younger people.

It can be an all-purpose argument-ender or a signal of apathy. And it
can really be annoying. The poll found
“whatever” to be consistently
disliked by Americans regardless of their race, gender, age, income or
where they live.


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