Quote:
Originally Posted by Ouisch  A pet peeve is a particular thing, habit, idea, etc, that really, really irritates a person. Quite often something that is a "pet peeve" of one person wouldn't bother another person in the least.
For example, a friend of mine (who is also a teacher) literally clenches his fists and winces with pain when he hears someone say "snuck" instead of "sneaked." Such a grammar faux pas wouldn't annoy most people, but it is one of my friend's pet peeves - it is like nails on a chalkboard to him.  |
Further info: this adjectival use of 'pet' is most common in collocations like this and 'pet hate' (something a person particularly dislikes); also 'pet project' (a project someone is particularly interested in). It was made into a trade name in the US a while ago (I don't know if they're still available, or if they've gone the same way as the 'gonk*' in sixties Britain) in the form of the 'pet rock' - a pebble that was useless, but was the owner's obsession -
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:...es/6417112.jpg. (I had an American manager who used the term 'pet rock' as a figure of speech - to mean a useless project that a business person devoted a lot of time, money and resources to: the annoying little animated paper clip in WinWord began life as a 'pet rock' like this, an online Windows help assistant called 'Bob'; I'm quite glad he had such a short life, for some reason
. I don't know whether this figure of speech ever became idiomatic in American English, or whether it was this manager's
pet idiom.)
* A 'gonk' was a stuffed toy, representing an intelligent animal of some unknown species. Very fashionable once. http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:...es/Gonk300.jpg
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