The Desk.

Welcome, folks, to another exciting edition of Words Watson Can't Stand. By "another," I mean the first. And by "exciting," I mean potentially mildly amusing for the span of a few seconds. This is just a list of words, phrases, and terms that bother me deeply for one reason or another.

African-American: I've discussed this before, but it definitely belongs at the top of this list. African-American denotes a person with American citizenship who immigrated from Africa. They can be black, white, arab, or any other race because the term doesn't not specify race. In fact, of all the African immigrants I know, only one is black.

[Blank]-ly Challenged: This patronizing, juvenile attempt to avoid offending someone is usually more offensive than anything else you might have called them. Grow up and call things what they are. Either that or stop defining people by their disabilities.

Full-Blown AIDS: That just sounds childish and stupid. You'd think they would have come up with a more formal, professional way of addressing such a serious illness.

Boonies/Boondocks/Styx/Hickville/BFE: It's one thing for dazzling Yankee urbanites to make fun of the rural South because they don't know better, but why do we do it to ourselves?

Anthropology: I don't have a problem with this word; I just have trouble saying it. It's that "r" following the "th." I can't say any words that have that sequence of letters, but especially when they appear in the middle of the word. I either leave the "r" out or I roll the hell out of it.