One of those annoying words people use when trying to sound smart, but which, if you analyse it, means exactly the opposite of what they want to express. Not h

One of those annoying words people use when trying to sound smart, but which, if you analyse it, means exactly the opposite of what they want to express. Not half as annoying [mainly because so much less common to hear] as my all time favourite, that so-beloved of Americans phrase "I could care less about..." One that, for some reason seems to crop up a lot this side of the point is "mortified", which means "deeply embarrassed" but which a surprisingly large number of people seem to think means "very annoyed". I used to have this horrible dragon of boss who would regularly berate us all at meetings and shout that she was "mortified" that this, that and the other hadn't been done right. It gave me great pleasure one day to wait for her to finish one of these rants and then quietly say "I don't think that word means what you think it means!"