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If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "If I had a nickel for every time..." or used some other entry on my hit list of cliches and misused words, I could afford therapy to make me quit worrying about these things.

First on my list lately are sentence fillers such as "just go ahead and," as in: "I'd like a reservation for seven o'clock, please."

"Fine, I'll just go ahead and put you down for 7."

I realize it's nitpicking to want to eliminate the "just go ahead and" but it adds absolutely nothing to, "Fine, I'll put you down for 7." This extra verbal baggage may be called "junk words" in the same sense that there are stretches of our DNA that do nothing but take up space along our chromosomes between the parts that actually accomplish something, like passing on my big ears to future generations.

They call these do-nothing stretches, "junk genes," hence, "junk words."

The extra verbiage also advances the threat of global warming because of the additional carbon dioxide generated by the speaker. (Listen, I need some justification for having issues with this trivia.) And, if I may digress for a moment in the interest of bashing my own cliches, I know the phrase "global warming" has itself been overused the last few years, but it's a lot snappier than "raising the average temperature of the planet between 1 and 6 degrees centigrade in the 21st century." I know that doesn't sound like a lot of temperature increase, but if it's true, and all the ice melts, the Florida-bound snowbirds in the year 2090 will be up to their atriums in alligators. There could even be sharks cruising the halls of the nation's capitol. Oh, wait....

Finally, note that people only speak the junk words; nobody types them into a sentence unless they are writing dialogue or grousing about the words in print as I am doing here. At least I'm not putting out any extra greenhouse gases by thinking about them.

Another thing that bugs me -- and if you ask my wife, there is no shortage of those -- is the tendency of the talking heads on Sunday morning political talk shows such as "Meet the Press," or "Face the Nation," to all misuse the same words in the same stretch of time. It must be something in the D.C. water supply. Democrats and Republicans both do it. It may be the only thing they agree on. These are educated people, who should be more careful about the things they say and the way they say them, but I guess there are no lobbyists against inane copycat speech waiting in their offices.

An example of a recent word bent out of shape by the nation's Sunday morning political entertainment is "reticent." Many of the politicians have used it to mean, "reluctant," instead of using its God-given meaning of "inclined to be silent or not to speak freely." When I hear yet another senator say something like, "The president is reticent to support this bill," I want to jump up and shout at the TV.

They also seem to summarize their Sunday-morning TV tirades about their pet legislation with phrases like, "At the end of the day...." The astute listener should understand that this translates as, "If you take my viewpoint and my opponent's viewpoint into account, at the end of the day, nothing will get done."

"That said...." is another favorite. This is usually slipped in after the politician has finished making a point and introduces another statement that more or less contradicts the previous one: "A and B and C will happen if Congress doesn't pass my bill. That said, D and E could happen instead." Now the speaker is covered no matter what part of the alphabet wins out.

By the way, the definition of "reticent" to mean "quiet, inclined not to speak" really was God-given; it had been one of five commandments on a third tablet, which broke when Moses tripped over a root while on his way down Mt. Sinai, and dropped it. There was an awkward moment as Moses looked to the heavens for direction -- until finally, God said, "It's OK Moses, just go ahead and give them the other 10."

Uh, sorry, God. I just made that up so I could throw in a reference to my gripe about the filler words -- "just go ahead and" -- that started this piece. No offense meant. I'm sure it would be okay if Thou said it.

Bernard Jacks is a freelance humor writer who lives in Marlboro.