It so nearly made it on to the list – It makes you think – alongside all of those other superfluous vocal ticks that plague speakers of the English language.

The ones that did make it included starting sentences with ‘basically’ or ‘at the end of the day’ and finishing them with ‘right?’ and ‘you know what I mean?’.

But there’s something special about saying the phrase, ‘it makes you think’… It’s a momentary recognition that it is all we do, think, expressed verbally. 

It’s like saying, ‘I am here, and I am sentient’.

It makes you think.