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AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We talk about a recent poll taken to find out which words or phrases annoy Americans most in conversation. Here were the five choices.

RS: Whatever, anyway, you know, it is what it is and at the end of the day. The folks who conduct the Marist Poll chose terms they thought were not only [bad word] but also dismissive, says senior editor and writer Jared Goldman.

JARED GOLDMAN: "I think most people use 'whatever' if someone proposes something to them, if they say 'Oh, I think it's going to snow tomorrow,' and you say 'Oh, whatever ... '"

AA: "And 'anyway'?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "That I think is used a lot of different ways. I think it's often used to ostentatiously change a subject. When someone is going on about something, the person speaking with them might say 'ANY-way ... '"

RS: "Well, with 'you know,' that's used so often, you hear it all the time in people's speech, and it seems to me that 'you know' is basically a filler of space. Is that your take on 'you know'?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "Yeah, I think so. I think that's definitely a big part of why people use 'you know.' I think also when they can't find the words themselves and are trying to get the person they're talking to to supply them with the words. I think it's also used there. But, yeah, I think you're right, it's most often used as a way to collect your thoughts when you can't figure out what words to use."

RS: "And 'at the end of the day'?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "Yeah, 'at the end of the day,' we thought it was annoying because when someone uses that, they might be saying 'Well, we've been talking about it in these terms, but I actually know what the answer is. I know how to sum up this subject. At the end of the day this is what's important.' So I think someone who uses that habitually, it can be very annoying when they do so."

AA: "How about the 'is what it is'? That doesn't jump out at me as a term that I hear very often. Where are you hearing that?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "I've heard it in meetings, and also when I've been in a long conversation with someone about some kind of problem that can't be solved, I think in an effort to stop talking about it and just stop expending energy on an intractable problem, someone just says 'It is what it is.' I think it's also a way, if you're being criticized, to say 'You know, you can criticize me all you want, but it is what it is.'"

AA: "Like Popeye's 'I am what I am.'"

JARED GOLDMAN: "Yeah, I'm not going to change."

AA: "Now turning to the results, tell us what the Marist Poll found."

JARED GOLDMAN: "The highest proportion of people thought 'whatever' was most annoying. That came in at forty-seven percent. 'You know' was second, at twenty-five percent. 'It is what it is' was third at eleven percent. 'Anyway' was fourth at seven percent. And 'at the end of the day' got two percent."

RS: "So who were the people that you polled?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "It was a random survey, nine hundred and thirty-eight people, all over eighteen."

RS: "And did you see any differences among the American public or among the demographics of the United States?"

AA: "Maybe by region. Were there regional differences?"

JARED GOLDMAN: "Yeah, the biggest difference we saw was that Midwesterners seemed to be significantly more annoyed by 'whatever' than people in the Northeast. Fifty-five percent of people in the Midwest said 'whatever' was most annoying to them, and it was only thirty-five percent in the Northea