In hack journalism, people use terms they barely understand, because they somehow become fashionable. The latest is 'fever dream'. This and that is a fever dream. Before that it was 'fraught', a word overwhelmingly misused. There's also "siloed". And there's bespoke, which basically means custom made, if it's not just the past tense of bespeak. But it's warped into all kind of other usages. The most irritating to me is when writers mix up ephemeral with ethereal. They're not at all the same.
Or inchoate, as if it meant some kind of portmanteau of chaotic and incoherent, which it doesn't. And dont' get me started on "begs the question", which is simply a translation of petitio principii, and not as they suppose a way of saying "makes you wonder".
@JohnShirley2023 (Also, "wrought" which means "worked" or "made" [see "wright"] but not something you do to havoc. That'd be wreaked.)
