Wretched turn of phrase

Kate Crimson of Gibsons, British Columbia, can bear the following no longer:

Turned up dead” — how I hate that! I hear it over and over to describe the discovery of a body, especially on Primetime with Stone Philips reporting on the murder of the day.

“Two weeks later, he turned up dead.” “Nobody knew what had happened until she turned up dead.”

“Yes, she finally showed up, but she was dead,” they seem to be saying. Does a body actually “turn up?” Maybe it turns over hearing this phrase, but I doubt it turns up.

You are almost guaranteed to hear this phrase if you watch faux news shows like 48 Hours. It is a constant.

I often wonder how the close relatives of the story subjects feel when they hear “turned up dead” applied to their departed loved ones.

That’s my rant for today.

Thank you for your time.

Always a pleasure to help one spew!

3 thoughts on “Wretched turn of phrase

  1. I’ll take ‘turned up dead’ over ‘turned up missing’ any day. Anytime someone disappears, you will hear this laughable phrase by most news stations reporting the story. If you’re missing, surely you will not turn up. Grrr…

  2. This falls into the same category as “was found missing.” How do you find someone or something if they’re missing? This is a sloppy shortening of “was found to be missing” and it sounds silly.