Some expressions are oxymorons. Like "Progressive Conservative" and "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence" and "the professional left" and "surgical strike" and "a new classic."
But one oxymoron that particularly bugs me is "left-liberal." The expression "the conservative right" is redundant, yet "the liberal left" is a contradiction in terms--liberalism and the left are definitely two different things. "Left-liberal" is the sort of expression you hear from American pundits at places like CNN who want to cast liberals as the "left" in themselves, and won't admit there are people to the left of them.
Another expression that bugs me is the noun "the center-left," which Tony Blair used to use. It's one thing to use "center-left" as an adjective: of course there are some people who are between the center and the left. But as a noun? We mostly understand what the "left" is, and what the "center" is. Yet "the center-left" is a vague concept, with the focus on the hyphen. You might as well call it "the non-right."
Those are a couple of my pet peeves.
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