Funny/annoying grammatical mistakes and odd neologisms

"The reason is because..." -- Used more often than not.

"That peaked my interest"

"My bike has peddles, and breaks, and handel bars" -- seen all of these

"That's a double-edged sword" when the person meant "That would kill two birds with one stone."

"Very unique" heard daily on our local news.

"In process" instead of "in progress"

"on sight" instead of "on site"
 
'refer back'
'return back'
'revert back'

Around here people pronounce peripheral as 'per if e al'

As mentioned in another thread: 'unthawed'.
 
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Oh, please don't get me started! As a professor, I live for that rare student that actually knows how to speak and write English well. I'd be happy to get "very unique," etc. Instead, I usually get something like "yo prof cn u get 4 me a leet job?"

"No one who says 'nucular' allowed through the gates."
 
I bet the people who don't want a nukular reactor near their homes will be calling their Real-a-tor soon.
 
Grep said:
Oh, please don't get me started! As a professor, I live for that rare student that actually knows how to speak and write English well. I'd be happy to get "very unique," etc. Instead, I usually get something like "yo prof cn u get 4 me a leet job?" "
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um...:duh:...what is "a leet job" ?
 
Khan said:
People saying 'tax return' when they are referring to a 'tax refund'.
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People saying 'tax refund', when they are referring to getting their voluntary overpayment returned to them w/o interest. ;)

I understand they/their/there and your/you're - if I do make a mistake it is just that, not a misunderstanding of the correct form to use. But I am absolutely terrible when it comes to possessives and all those apostrophe rules. I just need to buckle down, and get the rules in my head, but I usually am more interested in what I'm writing at the time than where/when to use the apostrophe or just an "s" or an "s"-apostrophe.

I also have trouble with effect/affect. I often substitute 'impact' ;)

And worse yet would be the ones that I don't know I'm having trouble with (was that one?).

I'm sure I drive some people nuts with those - sorry.


And it is correct to say:

The group of people who do this-or-that.... but not

The group of people that do this-or-that... < that is wrong?, right?

-ERD50
 
harley said:
I bet the people who don't want a nukular reactor near their homes will be calling their Real-a-tor soon.
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I think the Real-a-tor comes from making the jump from the sound of Real-E-state - to Real-a-tor. It does seem like they should flow the same. I remember thinking they were both strange terms when I was a kid - is other stuff 'fake'. What makes 'Real-Estate" any more 'real' than say, an automobile? Come to think of it - it *is* weird, I'm just accustomed to it now.

-ERD50
 
freebird5825 said:
what is "a leet job" ?
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Urban Dictionary: leet

A derivitave (lolololol) of the 80's software piracy scene. Originally "elite" was used to show status on a BBS. Commonly the people who cracked the software, or had sysop access on a board would be referred to as Elite. Later it became common to just use "leet."
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my loling (the fun never stops)
 
today I just came across "pouring" for 'poring' (over a report, etc.)


I think this is one of the perversions that is becoming standard, such that if you don't use it you are considered ignorant.
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My sister, who lived for quite a while in LA, has defended the "there/their" and "your/you're" exchanges as a "normal" CA or LA thing (?)

---
Here's another courtesy of Sarah Palin (not to turn this SoapBox-y but it jumped out at me as she used it a few times in the Hannity interview): "verbage".

"It was an unfair attack on the senator's verbage" (!)
 
ERD50 - this one made me laugh:

I also have trouble with effect/affect. I often substitute 'impact'

I had a teacher in high school who said "teeth are impacted, other things are "affected", and it stuck. 20 years later, I never use the word impacted.

My pet peeve, in addition to the already mentioned "I could care less" is "irregardless". Unfortunately, I think it is becoming more acceptable, but it makes my skin crawl.
 
I keep seeing "its" in place of "it's" (in emails, etc.) - it drives me crazy.
 
One mnemonic trick for those might be to think that "a" comes before "e", and something has to "affect" before an "effect" is produced..

--
'nother Palin quote just for ERD50 & kaudrey:
“Well, you know, first, Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because the adverse impacts all across our nation, especially with homeowners, is just too impacting…”
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I don't think all neologisms are bad.. I really liked GWB's "misunderestimate". Sometimes more/new words are better because they express some small difference that just wasn't possible to express with only "misunderstand" or "underestimate".
 
kaudrey said:
ERD50 - this one made me laugh:

I also have trouble with effect/affect. I often substitute 'impact'

I had a teacher in high school who said "teeth are impacted, other things are "affected", and it stuck. 20 years later, I never use the word impacted.

My pet peeve, in addition to the already mentioned "I could care less" is "irregardless". Unfortunately, I think it is becoming more acceptable, but it makes my skin crawl.
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When I see (or hear) that abomination, my brain turns off and I stop reading (or listening). It's a double negative.
 
"USAGE Both inflammable and flammable mean 'easily set on fire.' The opposite is nonflammable. Where there is a danger that inflammable could be understood to mean its opposite, that is, 'not easily set on fire,' flammable should be used to avoid confusion. Inflammable is usually used figuratively or in nontechnical contexts ( : his inflammable temper)."

--From my 'puter's built-in dictionary. BTW "'puter annoys me but I'm getting into it.

Who in the world would waste any brain cells or time on figuring the difference between flammable and inflammable? I thought the in in inflammable was meant to be an intensifier, as in "watch out, it might explode."

Yes, language us a dangerous thing, the last frontier.
 
harley said:
It's not a pet peeve, it's more of an entertainment. "Let me axe you a question."
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73454SS HAS TO HAVE a bunch of these.......:) "Let me axe you a question as yo sitting at yo dex, what my notes be"? Whuh??
 
ladelfina said:
One mnemonic trick for those might be to think that "a" comes before "e", and something has to "affect" before an "effect" is produced..
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ahhh, thanks - now that mnemonic might actually help me. Most of the other rules just would not stick. Hmm, I wonder whether this shortcoming has effected me? Or would it be affecting me at the time? Maybe it has had no effect? And would it only have an impact if it distrcted me and I drove off the road?


I don't think all neologisms are bad.. I really liked GWB's "misunderestimate". Sometimes more/new words are better because they express some small difference that just wasn't possible to express with only "misunderstand" or "underestimate".
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That's a pretty clever one, ummm, assuming it was done on purpose. No I won't speculate on that one....

Another one I found (hey, even ties into the Palin thread for you - 'stop photo-shopping my head on bikini babes!), googling a bit - fauxtography . I like that!

One I came across years ago, and really liked was the word 'clevver'. It was used to describe something that was overly clever, to the point that the cleverness took over the usefulness of what was originally clever about it. The best example I can think of is all those auto-correct things in MS Word. It *is* a clever idea, but in practice it seems to take over and do things unexpectedly, and not what you intended. A bit too 'clevver' for me.



re: irregardless

Khan said:
When I see (or hear) that abomination, my brain turns off and I stop reading (or listening). It's a double negative.
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me too. Another one like that is inflammable - ahhh, but here is an explanation:

Visitors to the Apostrophe Forum have been addressing this problem of flammable and inflammable materials. Richard Tinsley did some investigating and found the following satisfactory explanation at the Word Detective site:


Previous Columns/Posted 12/03/98

​
Blame it on Latin and its tricky prefixes. In the beginning, there was "inflammable," a perfectly nice English word based on the Latin "inflammare," meaning "to kindle," from "in" (in) plus "flamma" (flame). "Inflammable" became standard English in the 16th century. So far, so good.

Comes the 19th century, and some well-meaning soul dreamt up the word "flammable," basing it on a slightly different Latin word, "flammare," meaning "to set on fire." There was nothing terribly wrong with "flammable," but it never really caught on. After all, we already had "inflammable," so "flammable" pretty much died out in the 1800's.
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-ERD50
 
ladelfina said:
I love languages, and don't mind other people being pedants or being a pedant myself at times.

Harley hates the exchange of "exasperate" for "exacerbate".

Recently I've seen the classic "Marshall Law", and this new one: "X will be the deathnail of Z". I thought that was quite inventive!

What are your pet peeves?

What funny errors have you seen or heard?
Let's start a collection...
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If you like this kind of stuff, you'll love the Eggcorn database:

The Eggcorn Database

The site describes itself as "...devoted to collecting the kind of unusual English spellings that have come to be called eggcorns. " Eggcorn is a mispelling of acorn. It's run by an academic and all the entries are accompanied by appropriate citations.

Some (not necessarily the best) examples are the following:

+ Self-phone (e.g., the iPhone)

+ Wreckless (is a wreckless driver a good driver or a bad driver?)

The usage "X will be the deathnail of Z" is an example of a snowclone containing a eggcorn. There's also a snowclone database, but I'll let you google it.
 
The classics:
your/you're
there/their/they're
its/it's

One I didn't see is then/than. This one makes me wonder if some people are aware that the word "than" exists.
 
In a slightly different vein, I am mourning the loss of the adverbial form from modern American English. Apple's motto of "Think different" is the most prominent example I can think of. I always want it to be "Think differently".

2Cor521
 
SecondCor521 said:
In a slightly different vein, I am mourning the loss of the adverbial form from modern American English. Apple's motto of "Think different" is the most prominent example I can think of. I always want it to be "Think differently".

2Cor521
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Steve Jobs is the one quoted as saying, "people don't read anymore." His target buyers won't mind a thinkin' different. Yikes, I'm a typin' this on a MacBook.
 
"My bad" drives me crazy. Where the heck did that come from anyway?

My father in-law refers to my hosta plants as 'hospice'. Cracks me up !

- John
 
TromboneAl said:
Last Wednesday I heard a bartender say that she was studying zoology in college. That is, Zoo - ology. She couldn't pronounce the name of her major. I have heard it pronounced this way many times.

There's even a book related to this:

Amazon.com: There Is No Zoo in Zoology: And Other Beastly Mispronunciations: Charles Harrington Elster: Books
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I had a friend who studied zoology, that is the only reason I can pronounce it correctly.

So, so you pronounce flaccid as flaksid?
 
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