There is a very fun discussion at Blind Cave Fish and Sheila O'Malley's about words one hates. Not words that mean hateful things, necessarily, but words whose sheer phonetic misshapenness repels us. The lists are wonderful, full of both oddly idiosyncratic peeves ("the word 'scone' makes me uncomfortable," quoth one reader; others cite "moist" and "slacks") and widely held but hitherto unacknowledged ones ("dungarees," "cooch," "smegma"). Since this site so frequently deals with the topic of offensive language, it seems only appropriate to join in. I've made a very restrained list below. Readers are welcome to add their own. And when this game tires, we'll list our favorite words.

A short list of words I sincerely dislike, in no particular order:

phlegm
impacting
culottes
utilize
problematize
homogenize
mojo
pinny
horny
segue
downward dog (love the pose though)
sherbet
eyeball
deconstruct
goober
bap
quickie
buckaroo
pussy (I say this without reference to connotation: this word is a phonetic disaster, and would be hideous even if it only ever referred to actual cats)

Comments are open. Slainte.

In no particular order ans without reasons :

essentially
intrinsically
lounge
shaker
toilet
sofa
self-deprecating
macho
homophobe/homophobic
software
Democrat
regrettably
humidor

Cabar Feidh - Gubrah !

methodology

Everything about that word -- phonetics, aesthetics, most of its usage -- is wrong, and the plural is an atrocity.

synergy

Dungeness

whirled peas - just becuase I have to stifle my impulse to ram my car into anyone sporting this phrase on their back bumper.

proactive
penumbra
legitimize
homogenize

p.s. what's wrong with horny?

tramsitioning

othering

skillsets (phooey!)

narratology (also: narratological)

discursivity (why not 'discourse'?)

adumbrate

issues (i.e.: psychological/social problems)

technologies (i.e.: methods)

I feel that I can't love language and not have some words that I hate with the same amount of passion. Great topic!

-"Snap!" as in the one-word response my 7th graders give when someone makes a cutting remark. It's perfectly fine as a verb or noun, but not as an exclamation.
-guy (in the singular, as a form of address)
-discourse(s), dialectic(s) when used in an annoying, pedantic fashion
-neo + [semantic, conceptual, textual, cultural]
-teleologically, etiologically
-facilitation, facilitate
-slather
-morsel
-goober
-cock (Noun or verb, it doesn't matter. And I, too, intensely dislike the word "pussy", in any sense.)
-rigorous

As I wrote the above, I found it interesting that I recalled voices of the most annoying people I have ever worked with and their use of these words. Yuck.

Isn't it unfortunate that 'Jesus' is such an ugly word?

crotch
dearie
nipple
teat
panties
smear
mucous
jumper
spittle
bling
suck
rug rat
chick
gag

nuance: We don't need any stink'n nuance!
(re}engineer for design or company re-organization
facilitator for instructor or teacher
message as a verb
*****ize
luxury anything
oversized lot (Compared to a postage stamp?)
major motion picture ( I want, at least, a Major General motion picture.)
Resource Learning Center for library
associates for employees
like: if used after every other word
you know (see above)

hegemonic
liaise
and Del already covered methodology

repugnant

sclerotic

. . .although I like using them in the right circumstances.

"bap"? But they're lovely soft Scottish rolls, and make wonderful sandwiches.

Tasked

Paradigm

flash forward

meetup

Nothing to do with usage or meaning; I just don't like the way they sound:

button
pocketbook
loin
probability
catsup (when it's pronounced KATSUP)
truculent
bible (although biblical and biblio-words are fine)
funny
mortar/mortise
picayune
(and I second toilet, adumbrate, cock, and dearie).

These words, on the other hand, are lovely to me, or are fun to say, and a few have that strange trick of echoing their senses with their sounds:

connect
silver
brush
parcel (and its sonic near-cousin, parsec)
flare
insolent
slide
hydrangea

I remember reading once that Poe thought "cellar door" was the loveliest English phrase, more for its sound than for its spooky connotations (which certainly don't detract).

Fun thread.

valorize

empowerment

reify

fungible

sorghum

blog/blogging
[wonderful medium/activity, lousily named]

Personally, I find that most words related to sex or sexual organs are either crude or hopelessly technical. I mean, some Asian languages have terms like "gates of jade"; why can't we have anything like that? A choice between "cunt" and "vagina" has no good options, for example.

I also don't like "rural", but that's because it's difficult to say, all in one place of the mouth.

Crock - entirely too abrupt, plus has the added problem of being surrounded by the kr”- sound, a sound I find unpleasant.

Crocodile, Alligator - besides, being plagued by unpleasant sounds, both of these words are entirely too long. If I see one of these amphibious reptiles coming towards me, the last thing I want to do is have to navigate FOUR syllables to warn anyone around me. This is why bear and lion are only one syllable.

Like - when used as a comma or filler.

Cooter
Effective
Supplementary - or rather any word where the -tary is commonly corrupted to -terrie

Charles - yes, I'm not fond of the phonetics of my own name. The RL sound seems to be difficult for most people to pronounce without becoming overly nasal. I much rather prefer the British/Southern method of glossing the R.

...and Kacie - How could you not like the word "bling?" Onomatopoetically it is brilliant. Overused by moronic white boys, but still brilliant.

I wish I never had to hear anyone tell me that I need to "network," or to speak of networking as if it's some positive intellectual exercise.

intriguingly, it seems a pretty good mix of parts of speech - though a little slanted towards nouns and adverbs. I do, however, have a few of my own:

recalcitrant (it always brings to mind phonetic relatives like calcium and calculus, neither of which are interesting or happy subjects)
sieve
parenthetical
dogmatic
verily
and most overused "trendy" prefixes, like hyper- (especially hyperaware and hypersensitive), uber- and ultra-.

I dislike the word "pustule" for both the sound and for what it means.

I usually think of words I like, instead of words I don't like. If I was going to insult a politician, I might call them a festering pustule on the body politic. Every word has its appropriate use...

No wait! That's the word!

appropriate (when used as an adjective)

"Temblor."

A synonym for earthquake, during my radio days it was forever popping up on wire copy, written by those who:

-were taught to inject "variety" into their copy

-never earned a living on a microphone and had no clue how stupid the word sounded when spoken.

lisp (especially when pronounced "lithp")
simmer
cream
hoochie
ill
vinous
trepidatious
penetrate
ooze
weed
doze
historiography
image (when used to describe a painting)
dirge
swelter
turgid
tube
lewd
Bush (in both its proper and common noun forms)
angioplasty
angina
suffocative
herpes
anus or any derivative of that word
luge
abscess
bile
obsequious
heinous
amazing (when uttered by Penn girls and residents of Long Island)
pathology (when uttered by English PhD. students)
hubris
faggot (I still cannot understand how this beyond cacophanous word came to be associated with such stylish men.)
hashpipe (when uttered by middle-aged women from the Upper East Side who shouldn't know what hash is)
psychosomatic
romanticize (especially when uttered by cynical feminists, whose bitterness most likely derives from an absence of romance in their own lives)

delicious
facilitator
whatever (as used to end conversation)
doing good (to mean "doing well")

Favorite word: splendid

what the heck is "downward dog?"

Downward dog is a yoga pose. Here is a picture.

Erin - great thread.

Charles - you might be interested to know that in Arabic it is rare to connect consonants together in one word, so when native Arabic speakers learn English some interesting sounds emerge. "Charles" becomes "tisharliz" (some dialects don't have the "ch" sound), "world" often becomes "worlid," and "Britain" is pronounced "biritania." But "tisharliz" is definitely my favorite.

My contributions, most based purely on how they trip over the tongue:

fecal
wheeze
arrears
aureole
adumbrate
pestle
sclerotic
eschaton
ardor
adroit
narratology

and I second Durbin's distaste for "rural."

"Disorientate" (which is not a word)

"Irregardless" (which is also not a word)

"Patriarchal" except when it refers to the ancient Jewish system of rabbis/elders keeping the documents of the faith

"Hegemony" (And for that matter any of the other I'm-smarter-than-you-are words used in literary criticism)

"Whass'up" as a greeting (thankfully, the beer advertisements have made this one pretty passe)

any word that is a noun that has been recently converted to a verb. For example, the Kinko's ads where they talk about it being the way "to office"

"Carb" (both the fact that it sounds lazy to me, and the way it's treated as the root of all dietary evil now)

"pie" to refer to a pizza

The usage of Hitler as a comparative for any politician you disagree with but who cannot objectively be proven evil. ("Objective proof" - has systematically murdered citizens of his/her country)

any derivative of the word "pimp" especially when it's used, as it seems to be by young white men, to denote something they aspire to

"either" or "neither" when they're pronounced as "EYE-thur" or "NYE-thur" (I know, it's an accepted pronunciation, but it bugs me).

likewise, tomato pronounced as "to-MAH-to" Sounds affected to me.

"vent" as used to describe what someone does when they're angry or upset to let off steam; I had a friend who used to liken "venting" to flatulence.

"Crib" as a slang term for one's house (double-plus-ungood is "pimped out crib")

And I have to agree with Koregon on "bling"

And I agree on the lack of good, poetical euphemistic terms for genitalia. Using the clinical terms sounds, well, clinical, and using the slang terms is usually just rude.

I guess generally I hate hyperbolic terms (like "Hitler" used for disagreeable but not murderous politicians). I also hate what sounds lazy to me (there was a fad when I was in college to call one's parents "the 'rents" and to call pizza "'za"; both of those set my teeth on edge). I also dislike the generation of words ("verbing" nouns) when there is an existing word that does the job well.

Shoes
Squat

These words are clearly wrong 'uns.

S

The planet Uranus - no matter how I pronounce it, I can't help feeling self-conscious.

More stupid than cacophanous (itself a word of ill-omen), the word for the antidote to a snake bite - antivenin. (Why not anti-venom; that's what it really is.)

On the other hand, the prettiest street name in Los Angeles - Silver Lake Blvd.

Interface - especially when used as a verb.

It's a phrase not a word, but I've been very disappointed that it's been omitted from the Sault Ste. Marie list of overused phrases for the past couple years: "perfect storm."

Orientate or orientated
Certificate(d) (meaning to award a certificate to, or to certify), often seen in administrative law
Loose (mostly when the writer means "lose" but something about the double o bothers me)

At the risk of offending everyone in this universe - - - -
blog
blogger
blogging
blogosphere
:)
On the other hand . . . there are no readily available substitutes.

Impact used as a verb. have to agree that most noun-to-verb conversions are annoying, but impact bothers me the most.

"Between/for/about/with you and I" --
Any instance where the speaker uses "I" when it should be "me"

"Heigth" (as in "height" with a "th" sound at the end like "thin")

"incent"/"incentivize"

"circumspect" --too close to circumcision and respect and just gives me the shivers.

David

Seconding "carb" and "impact."

Utilize.
Vulva.
Smegma.
Blogroll.
Schmoo.
Cholesterol
Dawg.
Whatup.
Herb.
Sword.

It is hard thinking of _words_ one doesn't like as opposed to words one likes or _things_ one doesn't like!

pedagogy

I really hate the word analyze, and the words derived therefrom...they just sound gross.

disrespect(as a verb)
24/7

Tony when used as an adjective (Tony apartment, etc.)

discomfit

discomfit