The popular slacker term of indifference was found "most annoying in conversation" by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released Wednesday.

"Whatever" easily beat out "you know," which especially grateda quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were "anyway" (at 7 percent), "it is what it is" (11 percent) and "at the end of the day" (2 percent).

"Whatever" — pronounced "WHAT’-ehv-errr" when exasperated— is an expression with staying power. Immortalizedin song by Nirvana ("oh well, whatever, nevermind") in 1991, popularized by the Valley girls in "Clueless" later that decade, it is still commonly used, often by younger people.

It can be an all-purposeargument-ender or a signal of apathy. And it can really be annoying. The poll found "whatever" to be consistently disliked by Americans regardless of their race, gender, age, income or where they live.

"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."

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.

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.

Pollsters at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. college surveyed 938 US adults by telephone Aug. 3-Aug 6. The margin of erroris 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.

也許你知道，這就是事實，但美國人對日常交談中“無所謂(Whatever)”這句口頭禪最為反感。

本周三公布的一項由美國圣母學院開展的民調顯示，47%的受訪者認為這個帶有漠不關心意味的流行詞是“交談中最令人討厭的用語”。

“Whatever”輕松擊敗“you know(你知道)”位居榜首，四分之一的受訪者最討厭后者。其它入選的最惹人厭的用語還包括“anyway(總之;反正)(7%)“，“it is what it is(這就是事實)”(11%)，以及“at the end of the day(到頭來)”(2%)。

“Whatever”是一個帶有忍耐意味的表達，在語氣加重時，它常被說成“WHAT’-ehv-errr”。涅磐樂隊于1991年演唱的一首歌曲使whatever這個詞被人們記住(其中出現(xiàn)歌詞oh well, whatever, nevermind)，而在同一年代的后期，影片《獨領風騷》中的山谷女孩又使之廣為流行。如今，這一詞匯仍然很常用，在年輕人中尤為流行。

“Whatever”可在結束爭論時使用，或者可用來表示漠不關心。而且它的確令人反感。調查發(fā)現(xiàn)，無論種族、性別、年齡、收入以及居住地點，美國人無一例外地討厭這個詞。

《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。”

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，也不討厭whatever這個詞。

但其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(譯者注：約翰·F·肯尼迪總統(tǒng)(1963年遇刺)的女兒，美國民主黨政客)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(lián)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。

紐約波基普西學院的調查者于8月3日至6日對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(fā)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。