On Pet Peeves

I blame the July 8th Fort Wayne Daily News (located in Indiana) for first publishing such a word in 1917 and forcing me to rebel such a term. On that inauspicious day the Liberty Bell cracked for the second time on July 8th in 1835. The economic depression in 1932 also reached a low point of Dow Jones Industrial Average. Topping off the list, the term “pet peeve” was born with this statement found on the Oxford English Dictionary, “Ask seven women out of ten what their little pet peeve is, and they will tell you that it is having a brand new pair of silk stockings ‘drop a stitch’.” I bet it would make a woman mad but not a favorite thing that pisses them off. Not a “pet peeve.” I know I hate when my socks get a hole in them, and I hate when my ankle socks drop below my ankles into my shoe while I’m walking. Notice, I say socks, not stockings. As the times changed we ridded ourselves of an obnoxious word such as stockings. Similarly we should rid ourselves of “pet peeves” and it should join stockings with the same fate, nonexistent.

A “pet peeve” is defined as something that we frequently complain about. The same definition can work for annoyances. I understand a pet peeve was once an idiom, but “was once” is key. Everyone understands what “pet peeve” stands for considering we use it as an icebreaker when meeting people. For instance if I’m hanging with a friend and I see my dog, it would be much easier to just say, “Hey, he’s annoying.” Whether than, “Hey that dog, he’s a pet peeve of mine.” Quite honestly he is not a favorite thing I dislike, he is simply a dog that annoys me. Similarly, technology can often times annoy me.