Pneumatic. Forgot the dude’s name but I think we all know who it is.

Piranesi - Vestibule

the Invisible Life of Addie Larue - Palimpsest. It drove me crazy!!

I was reading a book where characters kept shrugging and so I looked up the word shrug in the search bar and it appeared I think 34 times. Which for a 200 something page book feels like a lot.

Also another book had the main character’s friend and his husband show up quite often and they were always referred to as “Dave and his husband Steve” after the 5th or 6th time I was well aware who Steve was

I can’t remember exactly but if you’re using octogenarian more than once in a book, it’s too much

Ayn Rand overuses “impertinent.” Very annoying. But then her prose is pretty ordinary. It’s the plots that are interesting.

I find in a few books where the author gets stuck on a word for a few chapters then moves onto the next. Like they are testing the word around the house for a week then move onto the next word.

Stephen King and “fluorescents”. He has a very specific way of describing light sources in general, but man you’ll catch this one a lot. Haha

Stephen King and arc sodium lights!

Celia S. Friedman: “He said softly”.

Anne Rule uses the word “albiet” so many times!!

George r.r. Martin uses “shone” a lot too. Everyone brushes their hair until it shone lol

Steven Erikson in the Malazan series uses the word “silt” or “silts” enough to be noticed.

“Smirk.” It’s usually an automatic DNF.

It’s a lazy trope to have the love interest lean against the doorway and give the protagonist a smirk. And it’s worse when they do it over… and over… and over again.

“Judder” in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet ugh.

Philip K Dick uses “ersatz” probably 7 or 8 times in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Hyperion Cantos - “gossamer”

Expanse series - “constituent atoms”