評論
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"It doesn't surprise me because 'whatever' is in a special class, probably," said Michael Adams, author of "Slang: The People's Poetry" and an associate professor of English at Indiana University. "It's a word that--and it depends how a speaker uses it--can suggest dismissiveness."
《俚語：人們的詩文》一書的作者、印地安那大學英語副教授邁克爾·亞當斯說：“我并沒有感到驚訝，因為‘whatever’可能屬于一類比較特殊的詞。它帶有一種不屑一顧的意味，要看說話者如何使用。”
Adams, who was not involved in the poll and is not annoyed by "whatever," points out that its use is not always negative. It also can be used in place of other, neutral phrases that have fallen out of favor, like "six of one, half dozen of the other," he said.
亞當斯指出，whatever這個詞的用法不一定都帶有否定意味，它還可用來代替其它一些過時的中性用語，例如“半斤八兩”。亞當斯沒有參與該調查，他也不討厭whatever這個詞。
But the negative connotation might explain why "whatever" was judged more annoying than the ever-popular "you know," which was recently given a public workout by Caroline Kennedy during her flirtation with the New York U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. "You know," Adams notes, is a way for speakers to seek assent from others.
它的否定意味或許可以解釋為什么"whatever"要比一直流行的"you know"更令人討厭。最近卡羅琳·肯尼迪一時興起，有意競選希拉里·羅德姆·克林頓離任后空缺的紐約州聯邦參議員席位，她在那段時期的一次訪問中頻繁使用"you know"這個詞。亞當斯稱，"you know"這個詞是說話者尋求贊同的一種方式。
Pollsters at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. college surveyed 938 US adults by telephone. The margin of error is 3.2 percentage points. The five choices included were chosen by people at the poll discussing what popular words and phrases might be considered especially annoying, said spokeswoman Mary Azzoli.
紐約波基普西學院的調查者對938名美國成年人進行了電話調查，調查的誤差率為3.2個百分點。該調查的女發言人瑪麗·阿左利稱，調查所列的五個選項是參加調查的人討論哪些流行詞和用語可能最令人討厭之后選出的。
