hot!
(where do I plug my cell phone in?)

whoops....

what about "shabby chic"? Ok I know it's two words but I do find them objectionable.

"Eames" when used as a descriptive or date-stamp. Especially when the item is so obviously not Eames or even of that era.

and since I've already managed to make my comments objectionable on this thread (sorry again)

I'll say none of the above
and stick with
"shabby chic"
as my absolutely most hated craigslist phrase

What about "shabby chic?" Whenever anyone's trying to sell something that's gotten all gunked up over the years, they bill it as such. How about just labeling it "old piece of crap," which it inevitably is?

It's still more accurate than describing something that was made... oh, minutes ago... as "vintage." The incorrect use of that word is my biggest pet peeve.

Judy -
It's a searchability issue. Do I search for "crap"? "Piece"? "Piece of crap?"? "Old"? "Old Piece"? You understand.

But seriously? That bugs me, too. But as long as they're going to call tiny apartments on airshafts "cozy and quiet", there will probably always be "shabby chic".

I hate "designer" because, well, everything is designed by somebody. Maybe it just wasn't designed by someone who designs for a living. Also, designer often is meant to mean "not ugly or crap" which, as we all know, is not true. Designers design crap all the time.

So "designer shabby chic" = old crap that is allegedly not ugly or crap. huh.

My main problem with the word "designer" as an adjective is that it seems to have started come from the idea of "designer jeans" which were basically couture folks slumming in jeans-land. And it had this weird kind of snob appeal that seemed to buy into the kind of teenage (well, I know that I was a teenager at the time) self-consciousness that tended to make people trust "designer" things more, because one never trusted ones own opinion about things.

So, although I did vote "curio" as my worst, "designer" really does bug me a lot.

the MOST over-used phrase.....

EAMES DANISH MODERN

Curtis, my problem with the word "vintage" stems from the same source... couture folks slumming in t-shirt land.

A John Deere hat without any grease on it and a brand new tee that reads "Getting lucky in Kentucky" are NOT vintage.

I look at eBay far more than I do on Craig's List. When I was looking for things for my current apartment which was built in the late-30's, and which I consider to be Late Deco (it's not relentlessly symmetrical everywhere -- it has a little bit of that slightly warmth that took the hard edges off of Art Deco), I did searches for some period things, and let me tell you, people play fast and loose with the words "Deco" and "Art Deco" in their listings. It made me exactly the same kind of crazy as Doug is talking about with "vintage". Art Deco should be on that list.

"Vintage. Definitely "vintage."

I was hunting around to see what IKEA items from the sixties and seventies looked like and I came across, "Vintage IKEA (2003) fooblah."

The gross misuse of the word stunned me so much that I forgot what the item actually was.

I'm irked by wenge. To me, it represents all that is bad about trendy, expensive, rare/endangered species-oriented, look-at-me-I-know-something-you-don't-know (and I know how to pronounce it), effete buying of stuff that will be out the door as soon as the next such obscure, expensive, rare trend comes along. Like petrified wood furniture.

Just my opinion.

I wish there was a way to flag people on eBay who misused terms. That coffee table with the $1.95 opening bid is *not* Art Deco. It just gets grating to sort through eBay after a while. The misuse of "Art Deco" bothers me but so does the mis-use of "Art Nouveau". I went to the MoMA soon after its reopening with a friend of mine who's a professional photographer. She's no idiot, but she didn't know which pieces in the collection were Art Nouveau or Art Deco either.

Well, I voted for curio, but I think that designer is also pretty hideous. In craigslist speak "designer" seems to translate as "so absolutely bizarre and awful that we had to pay someone to make something this ugly just for us".

Oh, I just thought of another one: "High-end". Ads that use the term "high-end" are the same ones that display a photo of something that looks like it came from Sears Home, and brag about how the owner paid 10,000 dollars six months ago for said item. Yeah right.

hot :)