Pet peeves lll - The amalgamation.

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Pet peeves lll - The amalgamation.

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1justjim
Edited: Mar 6, 2010, 6:40 am

Hopefully this will gather 'peevees' from both the previous threads.

2justjim
Mar 6, 2010, 6:43 am

And a 'bump', just to get it above the other two.

3ejj1955
Mar 6, 2010, 11:09 am

Bump ditto, or how will I ever find it again?

4Boobalack
Mar 6, 2010, 4:54 pm

I certainly don't want to lose this thread, so I'll submit that one of my pet peeves is a person's saying badly when he/she should say bad.

Oh yes, and there's a thread where a person keeps saying typing 'of coarse." It's so very difficult not to correct those errors, but I don't wish to embarrass anyone. Actually, it's because a friend told me that he/she who corrects the errors of others shall be doomed to Internet hell, and I don't want to go to Internet hell.

5Mr.Durick
Edited: Mar 6, 2010, 5:51 pm

Your friend is wrong. When you correct someone else's error, you will be embarrassed by your own. My Firefox spell checker tells me that I have misspelled "else's."

Robert

6ejj1955
Mar 6, 2010, 8:49 pm

>4 Boobalack: I've seen that, too, and it has been driving me nuts. It's so difficult to appreciate someone's point of view when all one notices is something like that.

7Pepys
Edited: Mar 9, 2010, 9:58 am

To be pedantic, and to help putting this new thread on the top of the two other ones, I must say that I wonder if these discussions would not be clearer if we used shorter threads such as "Apostrophes" or "I and me", etc. (along the line of other existing threads such as "Split infinitive" or "Twenty-ten...") instead of merging all our pet peeves together.

I understand that one pet peeve can bring someone to bifurcate and a thread cannot be strictly mono-thematic at the risk to be monotonous. However, these long peeve threads of ours are a bit indigestible for a newcomer.

EPS - #4> In France, we respell "of course" as "oeuf corse" (Corsican egg), "what time is it" as "boîte à musique", and "thank you very much" as "Saint Cloud béret basque" (phrases taken from the San Antonio detective stories by Frédéric Dard, in the 50s & 60s). So I do not see what is wrong in "of coarse". This is a fine spelling.

8thorold
Mar 9, 2010, 11:22 am

>7 Pepys:
The one I remember puzzling over in school French lessons was "Pas d'elle yeux Rhône que nous".

9Pepys
Mar 9, 2010, 11:54 am

8> "Pas d'elle yeux Rhône que nous"? I'm perplexed. What does that mean?

It is exhilarating for me to ask an Englishman "Boîte à musique?", and to see him looking at his watch. I must avow I did it once or twice...

10thorold
Mar 9, 2010, 12:07 pm

>9 Pepys:
"Paddle your own canoe"

"Boîte à musique?" is cleverer, though, and it must be easier to work into the conversation.

11Boobalack
Mar 9, 2010, 4:37 pm

>7 Pepys:
Perhaps "of coarse" is permissible in some situations, but in the one I mentioned, it is not. We were not conversing/typing in French, nor were we referencing the works of Frédéric Dard.

By the way, that was a nice joke.

12ejj1955
Mar 9, 2010, 7:19 pm

Just heard in a Dodge commercial: "Oh, yeah, and it literally gave birth to all other minivans."

Really, it did not.

13Pepys
Mar 10, 2010, 3:09 am

10> "Paddle your own canoe": too hard for me to find that one, thorold. Too clever.

14messpots
Apr 16, 2010, 2:23 pm

There's a nice book that I've got tucked away somewhere, called N' Heure Souris Rames. It has a lot of these. Then there's a punned story someone showed me once, called Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

15JimThomson
Apr 20, 2010, 11:01 am

>4 Boobalack: Boobalack

Keep in mind that the True Pedant has little or no concern for the emotional discomfort of others relating to their errors of speech or writing. We Pedants hold our calling as a sacred trust to help those around us clarify their thinking and expression. If we do not do our duty to correct muddy-thinking around us with confidence and boldness, who else will step forward to promote human progress? Be brave! Remember, you are doing it for their own good!

16Boobalack
Apr 20, 2010, 5:38 pm

Excellent! I shall endeavor to correct others with confidence and with boldness from this time forward. You left out a word. ‹(^¿^)›

17dtw42
Apr 21, 2010, 3:04 am

Aw, c'mon: in "with confidence and boldness", the "with" applies to both the confidence and the boldness. Perfectly grammatical.

18messpots
Apr 21, 2010, 4:52 am

>17 dtw42:
Sorry to carp, but c'mon should really be c'm'on.

19dtw42
Apr 21, 2010, 6:54 am

Logically, yes, I'll give you that (of course orthography is vaguer with this sort of "informalism"), though "c'mon" is the commonly-used spelling, as reflected in its OED entry. ;¬D

20Boobalack
Apr 21, 2010, 6:30 pm

Even though we understand that "with" applies to both, my seventh grade grammar teacher insisted that we use a preposition for each object. In her memory, and because the other way doesn't sound correct to me, I shall continue to do so.

21ejj1955
Apr 21, 2010, 6:47 pm

That's a rule I don't think I've ever heard. I can't see why a compound object should be a problem for a preposition any more than it would be for a verb: "I lifted the book and the cup."

22Boobalack
Apr 21, 2010, 7:56 pm

I didn't understand it, either, just took my teacher's word for it. I was too young to question a teacher back then.

23msladylib
Apr 22, 2010, 12:22 am

>22 Boobalack: Loosen up, then, and look around. It's done by better writers than the lot of us!

24ejj1955
Apr 22, 2010, 1:34 pm

There are better writers than us?!

25Boobalack
Apr 22, 2010, 5:42 pm

Of course there are not!

>23 msladylib: I intend to keep doing it the way my teacher told me to do. Others can follow their own instincts. I'm pretty loosened up, except when it comes to English grammar. It is a curse. Provided that the book belongs to me, I even change errors (in pencil) when I read. If the book is purposely written with poor grammar, I make an exception. Making a mistake in grammar is almost the only thing that embarrasses me.

26ejj1955
Apr 22, 2010, 10:25 pm

Another commercial has me wincing every time I hear it: it's for Ace Hardware, and the voice over says that you can go there and "turn your to-do list into a to-done list."

Okay, not grammatical and not clever. So, why?

27messpots
Apr 23, 2010, 2:50 am

In a more literate age they could have made it clever by using Latin (faciendum ... factum)

28dtw42
Apr 23, 2010, 5:16 am

Here's something that irks me. The subject is pronunciation, and I'm fully aware that we need to be more careful here than with written errors such as in spelling and punctuation: I'm happy with the diversity of regional and other accents; it's all good. BUT: the number of people on TV who cannot say the word "sixth" is astonishing. It is not "sikth".
Grrr.

29pgmcc
Apr 23, 2010, 5:57 am

#28 It irritates me when I hear an English TV presenter pronounce the word, "us", as "uz".

I also cringe when I hear the verb, "to be", being abused; particularly with comments like, "There's delays!" This is becoming very prevalent on British and Irish TV and radio stations.

30shikari
Apr 23, 2010, 6:28 am

#29: As /uz/ to rhyme with 'buzz' or with the first syllable of Uzbekistan?

31pgmcc
Apr 23, 2010, 6:35 am

#30 The former.

32Booksloth
Apr 23, 2010, 6:43 am

#30 In fact, either, depending on whether you come from the north or the south, but i must say I don't have a problem with regional dialects, of which this is just an example. Pronunciation is one of the many things that make language interesting. My objections come when other people can't understand what the speaker means or when they are simply making up their own rules, as in #26.

Which leads me to #27 - was there ever really a 'more literate age'? Educated people who care generally try to stick to the 'rules'; uneducated ones, or those who don't care, don't. 'Twas ever thus.

33reading_fox
Apr 23, 2010, 6:56 am

Can some explain the verb 'try' for me. My Betterhalf who is way more pedantical than I am - especially regarding grammar - insists that it is onlve ever 'try and' rather than the frequently used and to my ears equally correct sounding 'try to' *. Is this a specific rule? an instance of a general rule? or a historical carryover (mis)remembered from an strict teacher, and can be safely ignored.

*it is entirely possible I have the 'to' and 'and' the wrong way around.

34pgmcc
Apr 23, 2010, 7:08 am

I would "try to" be good; not "try and" be good. The latter could be punctuated to give a presumption of success, i.e. "I try, and be good". This does, however, become totally wrong.

I try to exercise everyday. I try and exercise everyday.

35Booksloth
Edited: Apr 23, 2010, 7:48 am

I try to exercise every day (but don't always succeed); I try (every day) and I exercise every day - rather different things. I'm sure there are exceptions but generally 'trying to' do something makes more sense than 'trying and doing it.

ETA - If in doubt, try substituting 'endeavour' for 'try'. You wouldn't say "I endeavour and exercise". Sometimes slipping in a less familiar word is all it takes.

36pinkozcat
Apr 23, 2010, 8:31 am


Radio and TV announcers saying "Feb'ury" instead of February is one of my pet peeves. Lazy, careless or ignorant?

37dtw42
Apr 23, 2010, 9:02 am

I think "uz" (or even "ooz") is just regional accent. I have no issues with that.

"Feb'ury" is probably like "sikth" and indeed "fith" ... elision, pure & simple, which would categorize as mild sloppiness.

"Try to" is more traditionally grammatically correct, but "try and" is also in standard use, and can seem more comfortable especially in constructions where "to" is already nearby, such as "he glanced at her face to try __ see if she was mollified". Robert Burchfield gives this issue almost a whole page in Fowler's Modern English Usage.

38jjwilson61
Apr 23, 2010, 9:53 am

"Try and" makes little sense to me. What's a conjunction doing there?

39thorold
Edited: Apr 23, 2010, 11:27 am

>34 pgmcc:,35,38

See sense 10 of AND in the OED: - "Connecting two verbs, the second of which is logically dependent on the first, esp. where the first verb is come, go, send, or try. ... Now colloq. and regional."

Amongst the examples they cite is Paradise Regain'd I. 224: At least to try, and teach the erring Soul. I think that's definitely expressing two linked ideas, as in Booksloth's example: to try the soul, and to teach it. But that's probably why we have the idea of "and" as a way to link "try" to another verb.

Under TRY v. 16b they call try and... in our sense of endeavour to "colloq.": one of the things they cite is Coleridge using "try and put" in a letter.

I think that confirms what we all knew - try and... doesn't seem to make much logical sense, but everyone has been using it in informal English for at least as long as try to... (the earliest example of the latter in the OED is Gray in 1738).

(Edited for clarity - I hope)

40shikari
Edited: Apr 23, 2010, 11:44 am

#32 Booksloth: To be pedantic, I just wanted to know which of the two pronunciations was the one that annoyed pgmcc: he seemed to be pretty annoyed and, as I suspected, it was only one of the two, not both.

#33/4: Isn't it a form of hendiadys (like 'good and ready' for 'really ready')? Things always somehow seem more acceptable to me when described by a piece of rhetorical terminology... I know Fowler in the King's English wrote on the subject, but can't remember what he wrote.

41Booksloth
Apr 23, 2010, 12:08 pm

#40 That makes it even more interesting. Annoyed by southerners saying it but not northeners - hmmmm.

42thorold
Apr 23, 2010, 4:23 pm

>40 shikari:
In Modern English Usage (s.v. TRY) he suggests that "try &" has an extra shade of meaning compared to "try to" when used in exhortations and promises. He ends with a classic (and often misquoted) bit of provocative Fowlerish: "... It is an idiom that should be not discountenanced, but used when it comes natural. See PEDANTRY."

43pgmcc
Apr 23, 2010, 4:48 pm

#40 & #41
Yes, it is the "buzzz" sounding pronunciation of "us" that irritates me. If attempting to board an omnibus I would never think it appropriate to be running for a "buzz". Running for a "buzz" would be what some people have been doing before the Head Shops are shut down by the authorities. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0416/breaking67.html

In terms of the implication that I may be compass-ist, I must admit, having grown up in Northern Ireland, I would have certain northern bias, albeit a different bias from an island of Britain based bias.

:-)

44LizzieD
May 15, 2010, 4:50 pm

"hunnerd" (I watch Jeopardy.}

45msladylib
May 15, 2010, 5:11 pm

> I've often wondered why so many people who should know better say "try and" when what they mean is "try to." It just doesn't make sense, and grates on my ears.

I suspect it's laziness, myself. Someone, ten or twenty years ago, said "try and" and pronounced only the "n" in "and." This is easier than the "t" in "to."

I fear, however, that it will become standard usage, logical or not.

46dtw42
May 16, 2010, 4:12 am

I suspect that another aspect of it is when the construction of the sentences requires the "try" to be in the infinitive: "I'll have to try to do that..." (or whatever): lots of "to"s in close succession just sounds awkward (especially with the assonance of "try" beginning with "t" as well). So "I'll have to try and do that..." sounds less like stuttering. Plausible?

47Boobalack
May 16, 2010, 3:31 pm

"I'll try to do that." This eliminates a "to" and is much simpler.

I wish authors could understand that when a person celebrates his or her sixteenth birthday, said person has already lived sixteen years and is beginning his or her seventeenth year of life not his or her sixteenth year of life, and when a person celebrates his or her fifty-second birthday, said person is beginning his or her fifty-third year of life, and so on.

48Booksloth
May 16, 2010, 3:44 pm

#47 I haven't noticed too many authors getting that one wrong but I do wish that older people didn't always feel the need to tell us "I'll be 94 next birthday" (so you mean you're 93?) and that TV and radio interviewers didn't always have to patronise them by referring to them as "93 years young", almost as if they'd started going backwards at 80.

49Boobalack
Edited: Jul 1, 2013, 7:02 pm

I know exactly what you mean about that. I'm not sixty-nine years young and get tired of people's acting as if I'm regressing. Grrrrr!

50CliffordDorset
May 18, 2010, 11:57 am

The '94 next birthday' cliche suggests that the person concerned never got past the phase of being 'three and three-quarters'!

51AnnaClaire
May 18, 2010, 1:01 pm

>49 Boobalack:
There was an old vet who was interviewed on camera for the last major anniversary of D-day (or possibly some other WWII event). When asked about his age, he used the "years old" form* to which the interviewer commented in "years young." The vet told the interviewer exactly what he could do with "years young"!

* I forget how old he was, but it was up there.

52jennieg
May 18, 2010, 3:18 pm

A gratifying moment that should be on You Tube.

53msladylib
May 18, 2010, 4:20 pm

>50 CliffordDorset: I think the 93 year old realizes that few get that old, and 94 (will, could be) an even greater accomplishment!

54msladylib
May 18, 2010, 4:23 pm

>49 Boobalack: I'm with you there. Having lived a long time, too, I've seen and done a lot, lived through some trials, and know a lot more than I did -- or even imagined -- when I was young. Don't take all that away from me, or trivialize it.

55Boobalack
May 18, 2010, 4:23 pm

Ditto, jennieg. Thanks for the laugh, AnnaClaire.

It just seems degrading to me for some younger person to call an older person seventy-five years "young." It sounds so condescending. Anyway, I'm glad others see that, also, and it's not just me.

Of course there are many older people who assume that anyone younger has no sense, whatsoever. By the way, that would not be me. I only think a person has no sense if said person has shown me that is the case.

56Thrin
Edited: May 19, 2010, 2:25 am

I'm not peeved about the following which I heard today; am in fact rather delighted as it's a very long time since I last heard:

"In one fowl swoop."

It's possible they meant "In one foul swoop" of course, but I prefer to imagine the swooping hen.

57Boobalack
May 19, 2010, 2:52 am

They probably meant in or at one fell swoop.

58Thrin
May 19, 2010, 3:12 am

Indeed.

59dtw42
May 19, 2010, 4:47 am

Quite. A nice image to envision a fowl swooping, however.

60Sophie236
May 19, 2010, 6:44 am

#59 - poultry in motion?

61Booksloth
May 19, 2010, 6:52 am

#60 lol!

62ejj1955
May 19, 2010, 10:13 am

>60 Sophie236: Good one, Sophie!

63CliffordDorset
May 24, 2010, 4:32 pm

>60 Sophie236:

In the recipe for Poultry in Motion, should I push it or pullet?

64Boobalack
May 24, 2010, 7:21 pm

lol at #63. I love puns.

I'm reading a book in which the author used the word(?) "unthaw." I could not believe it. The author appears to be very intelligent, except for that.

65msladylib
May 24, 2010, 7:25 pm

#64 Logically, "unthaw" would mean "refreeze."

But then, again, there are "flammable" and "inflammable," so "unthaw" might be a stronger version of "thaw," stressing the "un" doing...

66Boobalack
May 24, 2010, 7:30 pm

Yes, but there is no such word. It wouldn't have to mean "refreeze." It could be freezing something for the first time. The author was speaking of a man who had walked miles in flimsy shoes in the snow. She said something to the effect that he would be okay if his feet would just "unthaw." I don't see how "unthaw" could be a stronger version of "thaw,' as they would be complete opposites, given that "unthaw" was an actual word, of course.

67ejj1955
May 24, 2010, 8:42 pm

The New Oxford American Dictionary has an entry for "unthaw" with two definitions: "1. melt or thaw; 2. (as adj.) still frozen; unmelted."

Dictionary.com has a definition for it, too: "become or cause to become soft and liquid."

68Thrin
May 24, 2010, 8:48 pm

Oh, no. "unthaw" can mean "melt or thaw"? I am just going outside and may be some time.

69justjim
May 24, 2010, 9:01 pm

I am just going outside and may be some time.

A noble sacrifice, Captain Oates. Just don't go too far, we might be getting hungry later. :o

70Thrin
May 24, 2010, 9:35 pm

Very funny jj

71Boobalack
May 24, 2010, 10:44 pm

I stand sit corrected. I suppose any day when you learn something is not wasted. I've looked in several dictionaries and was unable to find "unthaw," but I don't have the New Oxford. The word is illogical, in my opinion, but we all know everyone has one of those! lol

72ejj1955
May 24, 2010, 11:10 pm

I agree it's illogical and seems unnecessary. I'm wondering if it should have a usage note. But NOAD is a descriptive dictionary and "unthaw" must pass the test of being used in different written venues and over a period of time . . . doesn't make it elegant.

73Boobalack
May 24, 2010, 11:22 pm

". . . doesn't make it elegant." Or correct. lol

Do you remember when "ain't" was enough to make your English teacher cry? Now it is in dictionaries.

74ejj1955
May 24, 2010, 11:48 pm

Yes, but at least "ain't" is labeled informal and there's a usage note that says "it does not form part of standard English and should not be used in formal contexts."

75Sophie236
May 25, 2010, 3:46 am

#63 - outpunned! Dang ...

76dtw42
Edited: May 25, 2010, 4:15 am

Re "unthaw": interesting to note the earliest citations in the OED. The first two (1598, 1633) show the adjectival past form "unthawed", which is much less contentious. We're all happy with "unbroken" without sanctioning a verb "to unbreak"! Finally in 1699 we get a clear, present tense verb "The Men..are cold to such a degree, that neither Love nor Wine can unthaw them" (so the meaning there is unambiguously the same as "thaw (out)").

The word is flagged as "now dial." though, and no citation since the turn of the 20th century. So, Boobalack, assuming the book you referred to was a reasonably current one, the author is definitely being, er, non-standard. :^)

77Boobalack
May 25, 2010, 5:02 pm

The book was published this year.
I'm usually at a disadvantage since I don't own a copy of the OED. ‹(^¿^)›

78dtw42
May 25, 2010, 5:09 pm

Me neither, but most Brits can get free access to the online edition simply by joining their local library and then signing in to the OED website with their library card number. Hurrah! Goodness knows whether there is any similar system in place in the US; might be worth investigating.

79Boobalack
May 25, 2010, 5:17 pm

I found online where I could subscribe to it for a year for $295 -- more than I can afford. I'll check with my local library. They could possibly have such an arrangement. At any rate, you are lucky to have free access to it.

80ejj1955
May 25, 2010, 5:49 pm

Yes--the online access is actually much, much better than owning a copy, as the online version contains all the work that has been done since the publication of the second edition in the 1970s. And another decided advantage of the electronic version is that there is virtually no size limitation compared with the print version (yes, even in a 20-volume dictionary, there are size limitations!).

81pgmcc
May 25, 2010, 5:58 pm

A friend of mine received the twenty volume version as a 50th birthday present from his wife. It also came with two add-on volumes and an annual yearbook with updates.

I think he's going to key it all up onto his computer so that he can access it rapidly. :-)

82ejj1955
May 25, 2010, 6:33 pm

Even the add-on volumes and annual yearbooks are a drop in the bucket to the sheer volume of what's online--there are about 70 full-time editors working on the next edition . . .

I used to have access to the online version. I miss it!

83CliffordDorset
May 27, 2010, 5:02 pm

>76 dtw42:

I'm happy with 'unbroken', as the 'un-' indicates the opposite of what follows, but 'unthaw' means the same as 'thaw'. I was amazed to find the examples of this in the OED.

This brings to mind the horrible 'inflammable', which is rightly being pressured to change to 'flammable', the opposite being 'non-flammable' to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences. But at least I can imagine 'inflammable' to have started out from 'inflame', which is an almost forgiveable misleading.

84ejj1955
May 27, 2010, 5:46 pm

>83 CliffordDorset: Did the OED label the word or have a usage note?

85CliffordDorset
May 30, 2010, 8:28 am

>84 ejj1955:

OED baldly states the meaning of 'unthaw' as 'to thaw', but adds the usage notes:

1598 FLORIO, Disquagliato, melted, vnthawed, liquified. 1633 T. JAMES Voy. 77 In the woods, wee found the Snow partly wasted away... The ponds were almost vnthawd: but the sea..was all firme frozen. 1699 T. BROWN Gent. Holland Wks. 1711 IV. 316 The Men..are cold to such a degree, that neither Love nor Wine can unthaw them. 1764 J. G. COOPER Power Harmony I, The flood of life, Loos'd at its source.., Flows like some frozen silver stream unthaw'd, At a warm Zephyr of the genial Spring. 1847- in southern dial. glossaries. 1895 Times 23 Jan. 9/3 Harcourt..would not or could not unthaw.

A magnificent collection, and a credit to the OED, I'm sure you'll agree, ejj1955!

86ejj1955
May 30, 2010, 2:19 pm

Well, I have a very warm spot in my heart for the OED!

I should note, however, that I was using lexicographer lingo: what you've kindly quoted are called citations (the OED tries to give oldest, most recent, and approximately one per century between the two, with additional nods to citations that illustrate a change in meaning or additional meaning); usage notes give advice on usage, such as indicating if something is particularly offensive or nonstandard or confused with another word or not used in formal contexts. To some extent these indications can also be provided by labels, which might include "slang", "informal", "nonstandard", etc.

87Boobalack
May 30, 2010, 3:37 pm

@ ejj1955. from dtw42 in #76~
The word is flagged as "now dial." though, and no citation since the turn of the 20th century. So, Boobalack, assuming the book you referred to was a reasonably current one, the author is definitely being, er, non-standard. :^)

88ejj1955
May 30, 2010, 6:52 pm

I just googled the word to see what I could find for more current citations--almost every hit is a notation or discussion about whether the word is correct! (Mostly, people are against it.)

It's succinct to call it an "illogical negative," I believe.

89ambushedbyasnail
Jun 1, 2010, 1:58 am

Unthaw sounds wrong to me but dethaw sounds okay. You know, like defrost...

90ejj1955
Jun 1, 2010, 2:12 pm

By the same logic, wouldn't dethaw mean to undo the thaw, or, in effect, to freeze again (as was mentioned earlier)? Because defrost means to undo the frost (freeze) . . .

What a funny fun language it is!

91dtw42
Jun 1, 2010, 3:04 pm

It would. Still, "dethaw" sounds to me like a teeter-totter for kids with head colds.

If you're into funny aspects of the language, EJ, consider this:

A thing that stands by is a standby. But a person who stands by is a bystander (not a stander-by). On the other hand, a person who passes by is a passer-by (not a bypasser). And a thing that passes by is – not a passby – but a bypass.

92thorold
Jun 1, 2010, 5:17 pm

And how many of those are the preposition "by" and how many the Danish-derived noun "by" meaning town?

93Sophie236
Edited: Jun 2, 2010, 4:13 am

#92 ... and not pronounced the way one would expect, either - I found that out when I was living near Roskilde (Hvidovre) for a while in the 90s. Danish is a very odd language indeed!

94pgmcc
Jun 2, 2010, 4:16 am

apropos the "funny language"

My father used to tell the story about a recent arrival to the US from Eastern Europe in the late 1930s. He was travelling on a bus with a friend who was helping him with the different pronounciations of words ending in "-ough".

He thought he had it as he went through, "Rough"; "Bough"; "Dough". "Ah! I think I have it."

The bus passed a cinema with a banner across the front stating, "Gone with the Wind - Pronounced success."

"Argh! I will never get to understand this English!"

95ejj1955
Aug 31, 2010, 6:48 pm

This one is about to drive me around the bend: there's a trend in publishing circles to criticize prose in which "was" and "were" are used as "passive writing." I want to jump up and down and scream, no, it isn't. That's not passive voice. Not only that, but sometimes we need those verbs to make the relative times at which events have occurred clear (ditto "had," which I've sprinkled liberally in some prose). For example:

"I was walking down the road last June when I met the man who would become the love of my life."

or:

"I stared into the crashing waves, remembering how I had buried the body in the woods last month."

Argh. What do I tell a writer who has been directed by a potential publisher to remove these words from her writing?

96Boobalack
Aug 31, 2010, 7:52 pm

Tell the writer to change publishers. Quickly.

97dtw42
Edited: Sep 1, 2010, 4:56 am

How very odd!

I work in publishing (admittedly not fiction), and that seems as bizarre to me as it clearly does to you. Moans about the passive voice at all can probably be put down to Word's grammar checker, but as you say, that doesn't even apply to what you describe.

"Last June the road was walked down by someone who met the man who would become the love of her life, and the waves were stared at, and the previous month's burial in the woods was recalled..." :^)

98Booksloth
Sep 1, 2010, 11:48 am

Here's a treat for all pedants. Tweeted by Stephen Fry who couldn't care less about apostrophes but knows the rest of us love and need them - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc2aSz9Ficw

99thorold
Sep 1, 2010, 1:15 pm

>98 Booksloth:
Fun, but I think I need to work on my speed-reading.

Nice to see that one of the things that came up in the "related videos" list was a film with the title "Doctor's Just Don't Get It--Gluten Sensitivity" - does YouTube have a greengrocer's apostrophe detector?

100CliffordDorset
Sep 7, 2010, 9:02 am

>98 Booksloth:

Brilliant, if impossible to read. Booksloth ... you're hardly living up to your name!

I liked the idea of naming a toilet (rest room?) after W.C.Fields!

101Booksloth
Sep 7, 2010, 9:47 am

#100 The book bit or the sloth bit?

102LolaWalser
Mar 21, 2012, 4:25 pm

These are so common I'm sure they've been brought up before (and more than once), but I see or hear them so often the irritation never gets a chance to flag.

alot when what is meant is a lot

compliment when what is meant is complement (and vice versa)

Apostrophes in plurals. (Where DID that come from?) And, the zillion mistakes in foreign quotations. Those are really worth getting right. In the same murder mystery I mentioned in regard to "willy-nilly" (a murder mystery in which the detecting hero is a complete Gary Stu with a PhD in classical studies and seeming mastery in a dozen other fields, not to mention a superb polyglot), there occurs a French phrase, "Quelle plaisir!" But plaisir is masculine, so it should be "Quel plaisir". And that's not the only such gaffe either! (Alas, Gary Stu hails from New Orleans, so OF COURSE there's going to be French flung any which way, or should I say, as the writers would, "willy-nilly"!)

103thorold
Mar 21, 2012, 5:58 pm

>102 LolaWalser:
I should stick to Truman Capote, if I were you. Holly Golightly may be vague about some things, but she's spot-on with "quel beast!"

It's irritating when hotels use "complimentary" to describe something they will charge you for whether you use it or not, so it's a refreshing change when they get it wrong and give you some innocent pleasure working out how you can put two complementary tea-bags together to produce white tea (or tea at 180 degrees?)...

104LolaWalser
Mar 21, 2012, 6:00 pm

I'd hate to stick to Truman Capote.

105Boobalack
Mar 21, 2012, 6:30 pm

::Laffin' at Lola.::

106thorold
Mar 21, 2012, 7:14 pm

>104 LolaWalser:
Ouch!
He was quite cute ca. 1950, though...

107Boobalack
Mar 23, 2012, 8:10 pm

Some people do not know the difference in cite, site and sight. I moderate a small message board, and there is one person who frequently refers to this sight, when he means site. There's another one who insists on typing "per say." I have editing tools and at times have corrected these things without using the "edited by" line. They never seem to notice.

108LolaWalser
Mar 23, 2012, 8:46 pm

#106

No, we'd just look funny.

#107

"Per say"--it could have originated with someone joking, then someone picks it up without realising it's kre8tif spelling, then it propagates and... doom, doom, doom everywhere!

My pet peeve in that category (homophones) is "Here, here!" instead of "Hear, hear!"

I wonder how fast "Hair, hair!" could catch on... must try it soon...

109thorold
Mar 24, 2012, 3:36 am

>108 LolaWalser:
It's better in French. When you start technical discussions about "un trou per se" there is always scope for confusion...

110LolaWalser
Edited: Mar 24, 2012, 11:47 am

LOL!

111Pepys
Mar 24, 2012, 11:50 am

109> You have strange technical discussions, thorold...

112CliffordDorset
Apr 1, 2012, 7:06 am

I've recently seen a few examples of 'showing her metal'. And they weren't referring to gold bling!

Heavy mettle, man ...

113ejj1955
Apr 8, 2012, 10:30 am

How about "to the manner born"? I've also seen confusion between "rain" and "rein" and "reign." It would be nice if people looked these things up, but they'd have to realize they didn't know the right term in the first place.

114dtw42
Apr 8, 2012, 10:37 am

Quite so. But do they notice the difference if/when they ever see the right version?
(Rhetorical question; don't expect anyone to have the answer to that!)

115ed.pendragon
Apr 8, 2012, 11:38 am

>113 ejj1955:
"To the manner born"? Surely this is the correct phrase? "To the Manor Born" was a British TV sitcom built on a weak pun which I suspect may have forever influenced a generation into thinking the latter is the true and original form.

116ejj1955
Edited: Apr 8, 2012, 11:47 am

>115 ed.pendragon: I think you're right--at least, Wikipedia supports this, saying that "to the manor born" is a pun on Shakespeare's "to the manner born." See, I've been corrupted by British sitcoms!

(And should have taken my own advice to look it up first!)

117dtw42
Apr 8, 2012, 1:49 pm

...and I did know that, but just wasn't paying enough attention to notice :^/

118ed.pendragon
Apr 8, 2012, 4:04 pm

>116 ejj1955:
Corrupted by British sitcoms? What else have you been dragged down by?!

119Boobalack
Apr 8, 2012, 9:41 pm

According to this, http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/to-the-manner-born.html , the two phrases are virtually interchangeable in modern times. It is suggested that 'manor' came about originally by mistake.

120LizzieD
Edited: Sep 28, 2012, 7:29 pm

Is this the place for me to mourn the passing of that fine word "nod"? I'm going to do it anyway. I just heard an NPR host say, "Everybody here is shaking their heads." (I'm trying to pass the -body/their business, but I understood him to say that they were disagreeing.) He felt some uneasiness too, because the next thing out of his mouth was, "They're all shaking their heads in agreement." Then I realized that I have heard this frequently. What's wrong with "nod" for up and down and "shake" for side to side?
As for French back a few posts, does "wallah" really have something to do with Allah, or is it somebody who doesn't know French trying to say, "Voilà!"?
I'll go now!

121thorold
Sep 28, 2012, 3:53 pm

>120 LizzieD:
Maybe the audience at the time of the first comment consisted of western Europeans shaking their heads in disagreement, who then walked out to have their places taken by people from the Balkans with the opposite nodding/shaking convention?

"Wallah" is classic Hobson-Jobson: it's supposed to come from a noun-suffix in Hindi that means something like "person associated with that place or thing".

122LizzieD
Edited: Sep 28, 2012, 7:36 pm

I'm sure that you've hit upon the explanation for shake/nod - except that I've heard it a lot lately.
That's an explanation for "wallah" that I don't see online, which is the only place I've looked. The first sources claim it's Arabic for "I swear by God" or something to that effect. (Do Muslims do that?) Anyway, it's another of those things that's out there and guaranteed to start me on a tirade.
How about the latest craze for "you know" as a verbal tic, not to establish a point of mutual understanding before giving an answer.
"What is 2 plus 2?"
"Well, you know, it's ..."
"No, you idiot! If I knew, I wouldn't have asked you!"
Sorry.

123CliffordDorset
Sep 29, 2012, 6:44 am

OED online indicates 'wallah' as Anglo-Indian, Hindustani, rather than Muslim. It cites examples in which is is tacked on to a person's function, as in 'Agra-wallah' - simply a person from Agra.

I remember it as an occasional use in English as far back at the 1950s, as a slightly deprecating expression for someone, but not very far from 'chap', 'fellow', or 'bloke'. I think 'fellah' and its plural 'fellahin', which the OED says is a corruption of 'fellow', and is used this way at least in Egypt, may be someone related, but that's just my feeling.

124CDVicarage
Sep 29, 2012, 7:05 am

Wallah certainly turns up in items from India. I remember watching that dreadful sitcom set in India during the Second World War "It Aint arf hot, Mum" (in my defence, I was a mere child and didn't control the TV) and there was a 'native' character know as the punkah-wallah who operated the punkah or ceiling-fan and I think there were other similar titles.

125dud5ers
Sep 29, 2012, 10:44 am

>122 LizzieD:
"Y'know" is so familiar after decades of misuse, that it is sometimes shortened to something that sounds like "Yo". The blessed Jimmy Hill, English ex-football person, was saying it in almost every sentence when last heard. For example, "He did well to get a shot in, but yo, he was never gonna score from there".

126CliffordDorset
Sep 29, 2012, 10:49 am

'Dhobi-wallah' is even more common, in my experience. Some of the (British-flagged run, and crewed) ships I've worked on in my time called the practice of doing one's laundry as 'doing your dhobi' presumably dating from the days when there were more crew members, and possibly the task was once given to a low-paid Indian worker, in the days of Empire.

127dud5ers
Sep 29, 2012, 10:50 am

>121 thorold:
There was also a char-wallah and a dhobi-wallah. It wasn't a favourite sitcom of mine but it had its moments.

128CDVicarage
Sep 29, 2012, 11:54 am

#126, 127 Yes, I knew there were others but couldn't remember the words!

129Crypto-Willobie
Sep 29, 2012, 1:57 pm

I suppose a magician or a detective might be called a voila-wallah.
Or a person from a certain city in Washington State, USA, would be a Walla-Walla-wallah...

130Boobalack
Sep 29, 2012, 5:58 pm

//Laffin' at #129.//

131pgmcc
Sep 30, 2012, 10:52 am

If you watched "Slumdog Millionnaire", the film based on the book Q & A, you will have seen the main character referred to by the question master as a tea wallah. His job was to serve tea to the agents in the call centre. tea/char/chai are all the same thing.

132Booksloth
Oct 1, 2012, 5:57 am

#120 Thank you for raising that one LizzieD! I've noticed it too lately and have spent far too many hours of my life recently trying to figure out whether characters in books are agreeing or disagreeing. Perhaps it's an attempt to be multi-cultural (not all people nod and shake the way we in the western world do - in Greece, for example, a 'yes' is signified by a cross between the two (a kind of sideways nod) and 'no' by an upward jerk of the head). However, when the writer is referring to English and American behaviour this is not only pointless, it's damned annoying too.

133LizzieD
Oct 10, 2012, 11:46 am

I'm back with experiences from the weekend, which included our 50th high school reunion. I loved it, but my longest-term friend drove me nuts with "as it were" appearing in every 6th or 7th sentence. Then I heard a talking head later using "if you will" equally often. I predict that this is the next conversational trend, and I dread it, dread it, dread it!

134Boobalack
Oct 10, 2012, 6:39 pm

When I hear "if you will," I have an urge to ask, "What if won't?"

135thorold
Oct 11, 2012, 4:16 am

>133 LizzieD:,134
I haven't noticed such a trend: It's a perfectly respectable expression, used in the right way, i.e. to qualify a term you're using by saying "this is what you would probably call it". But that's not something you very often really need to do in normal life. I'm sure it's irritating if it's used to excess.

136Booksloth
Oct 11, 2012, 5:10 am

#133 etc And I'd consider those quite old-fashioned expressions in that I have yet to hear anyone under 30 use either of them. They were once very common amongst the older generation and (for some reason) lawyers. (Don't ask me why lawyers - it's just that they are about the only people I can ever recall using either expression to me.)

138thorold
Oct 11, 2012, 5:49 am

>136 Booksloth:
I suppose lawyers are a bit like literary scholars, always digging into meanings and interpretation. Ambiguity in what others have said is their meat and drink, and they are therefore very concerned about what they say themselves. The really good, experienced lawyers (I've met a few of these: they do exist) know precisely what they want to say before they say it, and are generally able to express it remarkably clearly, but the other 99% of the profession are just ordinary mortals with a heightened awareness of the bad things that can happen to you if you say the wrong thing, so they qualify all their statements with disclaimers to try to avoid taking responsibility for anything they say.

Looking back on that, it's not really specific to lawyers: you could say the same thing for almost any profession. Good teachers, managers, clergymen, doctors, etc. have the confidence to say what they mean; the bad ones prevaricate. Lawyers are just better trained in prevarication than most...

139Booksloth
Oct 11, 2012, 6:13 am

#138 What a good (possible) explanation! There was I thinking it was just "one of those things" that had no real reason. I suppose another possibility might be that it started out as a way of adding superfluous text at a time when those lawyers were paid by the word (another reason why their communications are traditionally so lengthy).

140pinkozcat
Oct 11, 2012, 7:35 am

#133 Lizzie, my oldest daughter seems to be finishing every sentence with "and that" which is driving me crazy. I've suggested to her that she lose it fast and she just laughs and replies, "Of course, and that".

Grrrrrrrrr!!

141Boobalack
Edited: Oct 11, 2012, 3:19 pm

If a person says, "The creek bed is dry," there is no reason to add "if you will." ::Laffin'::

142pgmcc
Oct 11, 2012, 4:36 pm

The family gets everything, if you will!

143Boobalack
Oct 11, 2012, 4:43 pm

Good one!

144msladylib
Oct 12, 2012, 5:00 am

Where there's a will, there's a relative.

145LizzieD
Oct 12, 2012, 4:55 pm

Heh. Heh. Heh.
Thank you, jbb, for the Safire article. I love the paragraph --- I'll just quote him: "These verbal stutter-steps both call attention to the metaphor-cliché and simultaneously back away from it. They are the rhetorical equivalents of tugging at the forelock (difficult to imagine in Cheney's case) in a kind of uppity modesty, as it were." That was six years ago. Thorold, that's a good analysis, but if I'm correct in thinking that it's spreading to the general public, (and my friend is a pretty good bellwether, being the first to say "long story short," and "as well" many times, and look what's happened to them), "verbal stutter-steps" is more on the mark.
At least I'll be able to laugh the next time I hear, "if you will." Thanks!
(Hi, Pink!!! Sorry, and that.)
One last complaint, and then I'm finished until the next time. I am also mourning the demise of "there are." Listen for it - you'll hear "There's 20 reasons" "There's tons of them" and on and on and on. That seems to have happened as quickly as inte-REST-ed did.
Oh woe. I'm old.

146pinkozcat
Oct 12, 2012, 8:47 pm

Ah yes - that ambiguous phrase "There is a lot of ... " which is technically correct but "There are a lot ... " can also be correct if you are referring to each item of the whole.

And of course, it is easier to say 'There's 20 reasons' rather than "There are 20 reasons". I think that we are going to have to accept that one as the language evolving via the easiest route.

When I was at school we had a singing teacher who used to aim for clarity by making us repeat over and over "The tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips".

147LizzieD
Oct 12, 2012, 8:57 pm

What's wrong with "there're"? It's one syllable more, but doggone it, I always bite my tongue to avoid asking, "Is they?"

148pgmcc
Oct 13, 2012, 3:52 am

#147 LizzieD

I never bite my tongue on that. I as, "Is they?"

And of course, it is easier to say 'There's 20 reasons' rather than "There are 20 reasons". I think that we are going to have to accept that one as the language evolving via the easiest route.

I would have another opinion on this. It is one thing to give words new meanings, or let the meaning of a word change, or to introduce new words, but when one starts to accept a change in the actual structure of a language one is tampering with the whole purpose of language, i.e. to communicate. It is not a problem in the English speaking world if someone makes the occasional mistake, but if someone is communicating on an international basis the translations will become more difficult and ambiguities will appear, and the result is faulty communications.

If we accept all grammatical mistakes as the natural path of linguistic evolution then we will be heading back to the "Grunt! Grunt!" communications of our distant ancestors on the snowy windswept plains left by the retreating glaciers of the ice age.

(I can see the comments now: "There are some places where the 'Grunt! Grunt!' language is already back in full swing.)

149justjim
Oct 13, 2012, 5:36 am

'Grunt! Grunt!'

Anyone who has raised teenagers will recognise this.

150Crypto-Willobie
Oct 13, 2012, 9:38 am

> 148
when one starts to accept a change in the actual structure of a language one is tampering with the whole purpose of language, i.e. to communicate.

I suspect this is how linguo-conservative Saxons felt in the centuries just before and after the Norman conquest when Anglish grammar lost its inflections, genders, etc.

151thorold
Oct 15, 2012, 6:47 am

>148 pgmcc: It is not a problem in the English speaking world if someone makes the occasional mistake, but if someone is communicating on an international basis the translations will become more difficult and ambiguities will appear, and the result is faulty communications.

I know what you mean — you only have to watch a subtitled TV show to see the problems that arise when you try to translate (or even simply transcribe) normal speech, even when it's pre-scripted. But when speech is actually intended for international communication, it tends to be a lot more fault-tolerant. Not "grunt, grunt", but in a conversation between people of different language backgrounds you learn to reduce the cultural bandwidth a bit on both sides: when speaking you don't use subtle nuances and obscure idioms, and when listening you automatically pick the most likely, rather than the most literal, interpretation. Of course, that can lead to trouble when someone says something that you don't expect a foreigner to say in that context (e.g. the waiter who interprets every utterance as a drinks order of some kind...), but most of the time it works very well.

152CliffordDorset
Oct 18, 2012, 7:22 am

I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned 'If you please', which is the source of the shortened 'please'. I suspect it got shortened because people were unlikely to respond with 'What if I don't please?'.

Another interesting one, presumably one of booksloth's list of 'for use only by old pedants' usages, is 'By your leave'. This, of course, survives mainly in the formula 'Without so much as a "by your leave"'.

I find the 'If you $$$$' construct quite useful and colourful, but any examples would suffer as a result of over-use. I have in mind

'If you don't mind me saying so ... '
'If you will put a sock in it for a moment ... '

and, of course

'It you will let me finish my exercise in pedantry ... '.

153Booksloth
Edited: Oct 18, 2012, 7:44 am

Oops - double post! Deleted.

154Booksloth
Oct 18, 2012, 7:38 am

'If you don't mind me saying so ... '

In the interests of pedantry, I should point out that that ought to be "If you don't mind my saying so" ;-) (It's not you they might mind; it's the saying.)

155ejj1955
Oct 18, 2012, 9:46 am

Ah, cases--I don't think they are taught at all any more in U.S. English classes, so that the heinous "between you and I" is seen and heard everywhere. It makes me particularly crazy when coming from a TV or movie character who is supposed to be very well educated or a genius . . . but I guess they did not have my mother, who would say emphatically, "between you and me" if we committed that error.

156Booksloth
Oct 18, 2012, 10:15 am

#155 Not only TV characters, ejj: a great many people who think of themselves as educated genuinely don't know the difference.

157LizzieD
Oct 18, 2012, 1:57 pm

Uh oh. You got me started again. "Between you and I" is a first cousin of "You can give that to X or myself." I believe I've started that rabbit before and learned that many pedants don't find it offensive. I also notice that the problems come when more than one object is involved. I don't think any native speaker would ever say "between I" if that were possible, but I remember that "to myself" wasn't considered awful. (I still consider it an abomination.) Just to keep my rehashing fresh, I'll also mention my PhD. acquaintance's "a friend of she and I's."
(Start a hare or a rabbit? Now that I think about it, I don't know.)

158Booksloth
Oct 18, 2012, 2:21 pm

#157 many pedants don't find it offensive

Call themselves pedants?

159ejj1955
Oct 18, 2012, 2:39 pm

Obviously not like us! Or, like I? (I'm reminded of Marilyn Monroe in "How to Marry a Millionaire," in which she frequently started sentences "A girl like I . . .")

160pgmcc
Oct 18, 2012, 4:16 pm

#157 Me doens't know neither!

161Boobalack
Oct 18, 2012, 7:20 pm

Bill O'Reilly said just recently that the last opportunity a person would have "to see Miller and I" this year would be…

Should I bring that to his attention?

162ejj1955
Oct 18, 2012, 11:34 pm

If you think he'll listen, sure!

163Boobalack
Oct 19, 2012, 2:21 am

He probably won't even see the e-mail, as his staff goes through them and picks out interesting ones. I sent one, anyway.

164thorold
Oct 19, 2012, 7:03 am

>159 ejj1955:
She got that catchphrase from Anita Loos, who wrote the book. Loos was obviously so pleased with the phrase A girl like I that she used it as the title of her memoirs. Apparently she was still confident in 1966 that everyone would see the joke.

165dtw42
Oct 19, 2012, 5:45 pm

#157: You're not the only one, there :^)

166CliffordDorset
Oct 20, 2012, 10:28 am

>154 Booksloth:

Me? Oh ... MY!

Me oh my.

Mea culpa.

167CliffordDorset
Oct 20, 2012, 10:38 am

>159 ejj1955:, 164

Isn't this just a shortening of 'A girl like I (am) ... '? Or am I missing the inferred joke?

'Take a girl like me', of course, is quite different, and may be partly a source of the confusion of the confused.

168ejj1955
Oct 20, 2012, 11:58 am

I always took it to be a case of making a mistake while trying to sound more correct or educated or whatever than one is . . . but I'm basing some of my assumptions on the character of Lorelei. I love the part of the film in which she explains her "philosophy"--her suitor's father asks if she doesn't want to marry the young man for his money. "Oh, no," she coos, "I want to marry him for your money!"

She goes on to explain that a young man having money is like a girl being pretty: "You wouldn't marry a girl because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?"

*Quotes from fond memory, so probably not exact.*

169EricJT
Oct 21, 2012, 11:34 am

>154 Booksloth: I might use both "If you don't mind my saying so" and "If you don't mind me saying so.".
The latter could be used were I, for example, quoting a favourite saying of the person to whom I was speaking - or when repeating back to them a put-down they had recently used to me!

170Booksloth
Oct 21, 2012, 11:40 am

#169 Then we'll be asking for the return of your pedants' membership card ;-)

171trishpaw
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 1:20 am

This message has been deleted by its author.

172trishpaw
Jun 26, 2013, 1:23 am

This is my first time here, so forgive me if I am on the wrong thread.
Our local sportscaster says "sacafice fly".
I recently read "His eyebrows creeped together". Also read "Room 2B hovered in the air as it approached her".

173Booksloth
Jun 26, 2013, 5:41 am

Welcome to the site and the thread, trishpaw! What on earth is your sportscaster trying to say? I'm intrigued now. Tell us more about that hovering room 2B too - I want to read whatever you're reading! :)

174trishpaw
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 1:44 pm

He is trying to say sacrifice, but never gets it right. As for the 2B comment, that comes from an author's first book, and she was a finalist and semi-finalist for the Faulkner Award, so what do I know? I read a book once where a building heaved into view...

175trishpaw
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 1:50 pm

Question completely off topic: I received an email from Jeremy, expressing surprise that I had posted so many books in such a short time. Was I supposed to only post what I have
read since joining?

176Boobalack
Jun 26, 2013, 3:06 pm

I don't think so. I cataloged all the books I had as soon as I could after registering and add books as I get them, now. I just looked at your profile and don't think you've posted more than usual. I'd start out with a stack or three, post, then go get more, posting probably several hundred a day.

177barney67
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 8:10 pm

I don't consider myself a pedant, but once in a while something will really irritate me.

For several years I have noticed the addition of -age to the end of a word. I realize that some of these are now part of daily use and in the dictionary. Nevertheless, I'm thinking of words like "stoppage," "signage" and "linkage." Why not use:

1) "Stopping" for stoppage.
2) "Sign" or "signs" for signage.
3) Link for "linkage."

I'll add more if I think of them.

In the movie Encino Man, Pauly Shore's character would add "-age" to the end of words when he talked. It was funny. He was playing a dopey character who was tyring to be unique and clever. He had his own dopey way of talking. Whenever I hear a word with -age at the end, I think of this movie. For example:

"he's got the serious beak, and his own personal holding company full of fundage"

"If you're edged 'cause I'm weazin all your grindage, just chill."

178barney67
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 7:56 pm

When will people stop writing "Jane Austin" for "Jane Austen"? I thought bookworms would know better.

Austin is a city in Texas. Tracy Austin was a famous tennis player.

179jjwilson61
Jun 26, 2013, 7:33 pm

The last time this came up someone pointed out that there is a practical difference between signs and signage, at least in the retail industry. Don't ask me what that is though.

180barney67
Jun 26, 2013, 7:35 pm

I have come to loathe the use of foreign phrases, whether written or in conversation. I'm thinking particularly of Latin, which I used to know, and French, which authors love to use.

I was at a wedding many years ago when a girl I was talking to used "de rigeur." I had to ask her what it meant. I would never use foreign phrases in conversation. Or print.

I find this kind of thing annoying and pretentious.

181PhaedraB
Jun 26, 2013, 7:39 pm

179 > Signage is the art and practice of using signs. "We have a signage strategy. Here's one of the signs we'll use."

182barney67
Edited: Jun 26, 2013, 7:55 pm

For a brief time I worked for a newspaper. I'm sure people here have noticed that journalists have a language all their own and often shred the English language.

One guy who had been at the paper for many years, and who had his own column, chastised me for using the word "journalist." He said anyone could call themselves a journalist. He said he was, or had been, a "reporter." Or an "editor."

I think the discussion of annoyances works better in separate threads, rather than in long threads like this one.

183trishpaw
Edited: Jun 27, 2013, 1:13 am

How many books can you post?

184Booksloth
Jun 27, 2013, 5:47 am

#183 You can post up to 200 on a free membership, after that you have to pay. I'm intrigued by Jeremy's message - if I were you I would reply and ask if you are doing something wrong. As I recall, I posted the full 200 books, on the first day I joined and I've never heard of anyone getting this message before. Do let us know what he replies, won't you? I can't imagine he meant it as any kind of criticism.

185dtw42
Jun 27, 2013, 10:52 am

What Booksloth said. I posted most of my existing library in two or three blitz sittings; no-one bothered me about it: surely that's what we're expected to do?

186trishpaw
Jun 28, 2013, 3:28 am

#184 Jeremy responded and said that I could post as many books as I wanted. I asume that I do the wrong thing, even if no one says it. Although I did get chastised on another thread (topic?) for posting a reply and not noting who I was responding to.Can that be a peeve? Not cutting the new folks some slack?

187Booksloth
Jun 28, 2013, 6:47 am

#186 Please don't ake this one the wrong way because you did ask ;-)

Not cutting new folks some slack is a genuine and entirely reasonable peeve bit it isn't one for this group. Pdeants' corner is about grammatical peeves: people who misuse apostrophes, general bad punctuation and poor use of language etc. I'm not sure what would be the correct group for your complaint but I'm sure there is one and I'm also sure someone else can tell us what it is.

On the other hand, do try not to be over-sensitive about these things (easier said than done, I know). It can be really hard to get across in an online message that you are saying something with a smile and not meaning to offend and it's very likely that nobody meant to upset you. A good tip is to check out the 'profile page' of any group before posting there because that is the page that tells you all about the group and what goes on there (eg. click on 'Pedants' corner' above) and not every thread title is self-explanatory.

Meantime, don't be put off and have a good time here - and you can bet your life that the people telling you you did something wrong made exactly the same mistakes themselves when they were new here (me included)!

188trishpaw
Jun 28, 2013, 7:35 am

187
Well, I realized as soon as I went to bed that I had posted the thing about pet peeves in the wrong group, so I'm firing on all cylinders now, I guess.
One of my pet peeves, which I'll bet you all don't experience much, is saying "Fark" for fork, "Farty" for forty, etc. This seems to be a St. Louis area thing...haven't heard of it happening elsewhere. Also, "Zinc" for sink.

189pgmcc
Jun 28, 2013, 8:12 am

#188

Along the same lines I hear people say, "uz" for "us" and "idear" instead of "idea".

190Collectorator
Jun 28, 2013, 11:50 am

This member has been suspended from the site.

191trishpaw
Jun 28, 2013, 11:25 pm

I have a dear friend who says "ideal" for idea, and I haven't the heart to correct her.

192Osbaldistone
Jun 29, 2013, 6:42 pm

>180 barney67:
So you won't use 'et cetera' or 'deja vu'? At what point is an English word or phrase truly 'foreign'. One person's vocabulary differs from another's, but that doesn't mean one is pretentious. 'De rigeur' came to English from the French around 1850, so why not use it?

I once was grilled by a client for using 'conflate' in a letter to the client, which came into English from the Latin ca 1600 (making it newer than 'et cetera', but older than 'deja vu'). After discussing the meaning of the word, she made it pretty clear that she thought I was being pretentious, apparently because the word was not in her vocabulary. Well, 'et cetera' (ca 1100), 'deja vu' (ca 1900), and 'arroyo' (ca 1800), are in my vocabulary, 'de rigeur' (ca 1850) is surely in some other folks' vocabulary, and some would use 'art nouveau' (ca 1900) without hesitation. 'Arroyo' and 'wadi' entered my vocabulary when i moved to Texas, along with a few other words that came into American English from Spanish via Latin America.

Let's face it - English is a language made up mostly of words borrowed from the languages of invaders and the invaded (plus Latin and Greek because it was cool).

Os.

193barney67
Jun 29, 2013, 7:24 pm

192 -- So you won't use 'et cetera' or 'deja vu'?

No.

194AnnaClaire
Edited: Jun 29, 2013, 10:37 pm

>193 barney67:
So when you're talking about deja vu, what do you call that phenomenon?

196Booksloth
Jun 30, 2013, 7:58 am

As Osbaldistone just said, the English language is made up of the leavings of so many invading hordes it's no longer possible to hold a conversation in 'pure' English and the only reason for even attempting to do so must be as an excuse for an extremely limited vocabulary. Though I haven't the time or the inclination to prove it, I'm willing to bet that a majority of the words used in message #180 have their origins in other languages than Anglo Saxon. Certainly in order to avoid any 'foreign' words it would be impossible to discuss medicine or science, animals and plants, mathematics, foods and many other subjects. You couldn't go for a coffee in a cafe, eat beef in a restaurant, play your guitar while wearing your pyjamas or your brogues whatever the season or play even a phoney drum for a soldier.

197barney67
Jun 30, 2013, 1:16 pm

194 -- I might say, "Seems like I've been here before" or something like that. But when I am brutall yhonest with myself, on a rational day, I don't call it anything because I don't believe in it. It doesn't signify anything of real value. I consider it a product of imagination, delusion, or even tantamount to believing in extraterrestial life.

If you want to split hairs, of course English is derived from many sources, Greek, Latin, and so on. But there is a difference, at least one difference, between words with Greek and Latin roots which have long ago entered our language, and terms like "de rigeur" which on its face is obviously foreign and a fairly recent import. Only a pedant would fail to see this distinction. If I were to ask the majority of Americans to identify the foreign part of a sentence, they would spot "de rigeur" with no problem. Many of them would accuse you of putting on airs. Many of them would probably never want to talk to you again. When one writes and when one speaks, it is important, so I have been told many times, to keep one's audience in mind.

I like language, but I don't feel I have to prove anything to anyone, to flex my muscles, so to speak. My internet writing is all first draft, off the top of my head, with occasional edits to fix typos, add or subtract information, or correct minor mistakes, and even this kind of editing has evoked suspicion. In the repugnant Pro & Con group, the appearance of "Edit" in one of my posts would cause some yahoo to accuse me of deviously or dishonestly altering my position on the issue of the moment, whatever absurdity was being debated at that time, when in fact I was making the innocuous kind of edits I just mentioned. After the trust is gone, there is little if anything left to say.

198Booksloth
Jul 1, 2013, 3:12 am

#197 Only a pedant would fail to see this distinction.

You do know which group this is?

199barney67
Jul 1, 2013, 12:47 pm

Yes, but I thought that was meant ironically. I'm not a pedant. But I am interested in English.

200Osbaldistone
Jul 2, 2013, 4:58 pm

>197 barney67:
Barney, seems like you're being quite pedantic, in that your rule for what is unpretentious English is quite narrow. If you grew up in a family that used such English words (deja vu, et cetera, de rigeur, queue, caravan, etc.) often enough that it was just part of your vocabulary, using them would clearly have nothing to do with 'flexing your muscles'. As with the push back from my client I described in post 192, she seemed to assume that I was showing off, when I was just using a word that is mine, and one which I hear in news reports and technical discussion often enough not to feel odd by using it. And all of the words we've discussed in this light have been used in English for at least 100 years. In the US, many words that are routine in the northeast are unheard of in the southwest. A Texan might be tempted to think the word 'davenport' for a sofa to be pretentious, but someone from upstate NY would use it without thought (and might be tempted to consider the Texas low class for using 'sofa').

There are lots of English words that came from French that are used routinely in Louisiana, but sound 'foreign' elsewhere simply because of the strong French influence when it was a French territory. Nothing pretentious - just different vocabulary (much like Scots-English, Irish-English, American-English, and Aussie-English). So, if you read a novel by a writer out of Louisiana (as with listening to music out of Louisiana), you're likely to find many words that look (and may sound) French. A lot of folks migrated from Louisiana to Texas when Houston was booming, and again when Katrina and Ike (hurricanes) hit, so we in Texas are pretty comfortable with some of these 'French' words in everyday use - You'll hear a lot of folks use "beaucoup" (boo-coo; means "a lot") in everyday speech, as in "I've got beaucoup shrimp at home ready for the shrimp boil tonight". But no one would ever consider this pretentious. If anything, quite the opposite.

You said "Only a pedant would fail to see this distinction" - I would argue that it's not a distinction (a marked difference or contrast), but a continuum. Words enter English from other languages all the time and how they look in print (which often changes over time), how long they've been used and by how many English speakers and by what portion of English speakers, and how they are pronounced are nearly infinite variables. There is no clear distinction based on when a word was first used in English and how the word looks on the page (for example, the evolution of 'et cetera', 'etcetera', 'etc.'; the last being quite commonly used in print in English).

Now, 'beaucoup' has only been in the English language for about 100 years. 'De rigeur' for about 160 years (which you say is "on its face is obviously foreign and a fairly recent import."). 'Et cetera', which you reject, entered the language 900 years ago, and is on its face obviously foreign (Latin). 'Appendix' entered English in the 16th century, so I guess it's out if 'et cetera' is out - on it's face obviously Latin and too new. Just how long does a word have to be in use in English (and by whom) before it is no longer "obviously foreign and a fairly recent import"? I assume you won't stand in a 'queue' - on its face obviously French and too recent (16th c.). Of course, I won't either unless I travel to the UK. As long as I stay near home, I stand in a 'line'. But back in my programming days at University, I submitted my program to the queue on the mainframe (yes, I'm that old).

Os.

201EricJT
Jul 3, 2013, 5:47 am

>200 Osbaldistone: I didn't merely queue for time on a mainframe, I used machine code to write the assembly language for an early HEC computer :-)
Hmm. I suppose that last word is redundant as HEC stands for Hollerith Electronic Computer.

202pgmcc
Jul 3, 2013, 6:02 am

I used to submit my jobs on punched cards to the reception area where the card pack was queued for feeding into the ICL1906S.

For really cutting edge, on-line work, I could use a teleprinter to interact with the ICL1904A.

I never got to use paper tape. Just missed that one.

203Booksloth
Jul 3, 2013, 6:36 am

#200 Ditto to all of that (if 'ditto' isn't too Latin). Of course language change is a continuum and it's pointless and extrememly pedantic to assert that words that came into the language more than, let's say, 300 years ago are okay while newer adoptions are not - they all had to start somewhere and it's what makes English such a rich language. All these words were 'new' to English at some point and to abhor their use is ridiculous. Of course, in fairness, I'd have to point out here that 99% of this thread and group is about our dislike of certain neologisms but I would argue that there is a difference between adopting words from another language and criticing usages that are simply wrong.

204pgmcc
Edited: Jul 3, 2013, 7:05 am

#200 ...and it's pointless and extrememly pedantic to assert that words that...

Remind me again what this group is called. :-)

George Orwell, in Why I write, advocates the avoidance of all words of foreign origin and promotes the use of words of only Anglo-Saxon origin in the interests of clarity and simplicity of meaning.

To put his position in context he was talking about political writings and journalism (including book and theatre reviews) with the intention that the meaning of the written word should be accessible to the widest possible audience.

I have yet to write my review on this book, but I must say it is full of thought provoking ideas. This is part of the reason my review has not been written: there is just so much to discuss.

Self criticism: Orwell also promoted the avoidance of old clichés (I know that's a tautology but whatever) and he would have chastised me for my use of the phrases, "the widest of possible audience", "in the interests of clarity", "To put his position in context", "the written word", "but I must say", and "thought provoking ideas".

I really enjoyed that book.

205thorold
Jul 3, 2013, 9:30 am

I don't think Orwell really meant we should only use words of Anglo-Saxon origin: there were a few people in the twenties and thirties who tried that, inventing a lot of new bits of word-hoard for the purpose (Percy Grainger is a famous example), but it all got rather mixed up with unsavoury ideas about "racial purity" that wouldn't have been at all sympathetic to Orwell. His argument is more like what you still get on "effective communication" courses today: use the simplest, shortest word that will do the job. Orwell uses the expression "everyday English" for this. It's partly about making the text accessible, but partly he's also using the essay to attack political writers who are afraid to express an opinion clearly.

206barney67
Jul 3, 2013, 10:36 am

200 -- I understand the point you are making. You made it before. It really isn't that complicated.

One's own working vocabulary is often different from everyday English. My own working vocabulary is beside the point. I am not the first to say that it is important to keep one's audience in mind, while speaking or writing, and that the audience often has a working vocabulary different from one's own. Working at a newspaper taught me this lesson quite well, though I have learned it several times over the years. It probably is not scientific or something chiseled in stone. But so what? Maybe it is nothing more than a feel for common usage, based on experience. Maybe it is consideration for other people, humility, etiquette, and a sense that people are not like me.

If I chose a group of people at random and showed them the list you made and asked them which word or words were not part of common English, as it is normally spoken or written, at least in America, I think they would have no trouble pointing out which words did not belong. Your list:

1) deja vu -- used all the time
2) et cetera -- used all the time.
3) de rigeur -- obviously foreign, most people don't use it or know it.
4) queue -- not many use it, but most have heard of it or seen it
5) caravan -- not many use it in normal conversation, but many know it or at least have heard it or seen it.

That leaves 3 as the oddball.

207barney67
Jul 3, 2013, 10:44 am

204 -- Self criticism: Orwell also promoted the avoidance of old clichés (I know that's a tautology but whatever) and he would have chastised me for my use of the phrases, "the widest of possible audience", "in the interests of clarity", "To put his position in context", "the written word", "but I must say", and "thought provoking ideas".

The internet is casual, to say the least. I expect language on the internet, at least in forums, to be spontaneous, first-draft or rough-draft material. I'm certainly not going to put a lot of thought or effort into something that's going to disappear or be forgotten very quickly. It's not like anyone here is writing for publication.

208barney67
Jul 3, 2013, 10:46 am

It looks like Orwell and I are saying much the same thing.

209jbbarret
Jul 3, 2013, 10:59 am

>204 pgmcc: Another of Orwell's recommendations was, If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
So I was slightly surprised to find that, in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, he uses the phrase ... without so much as a with your leave or by your leave.
Without so much as a by your leave, I'm sure we're all familiar with, but I don't recall noticing that longer version before.

210barney67
Jul 3, 2013, 1:27 pm

Just as an aside, I had to look up "Vous et nul autre" in the early days of LibraryThing.

"Without so much as a by your leave"
-- I first heard this from Monty Python. Always amuses me.

211ejj1955
Jul 3, 2013, 1:56 pm

Once upon a time in America, it was assumed that any educated person would have taken at least one foreign language, and in my little schools, the language offered was French. I studied it for four years in high school and a further year in college, with the result that I'm perfectly comfortable when someone uses a phrase such as "de rigeur"--plus I'm pretty sure that's widely used in the kind of Regency-era fiction I'm fond of reading. Now I'd expect that students might be equally likely to sprinkle Spanish phrases in their conversations--having lived in Southern California for a while made that a pretty normal experience for me, too, though it sure took a while before I could pronounce "Sepulveda" or "La Jolla."

Sometimes it's simply a matter of trying to choose the most precise word or phrase to express a thought--I think "deja vu" is a good example of that, as it defines a very specific mental moment of recognition for which one cannot immediately provide a plausible explanation, even if I also reject some supernatural or extrasensory cause behind it.

212jbbarret
Jul 3, 2013, 2:13 pm

For a tour de force magnifique, see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37zaGYx-ANI

213jbbarret
Jul 3, 2013, 4:21 pm

I see that in France instead of "c'est de rigueur" they are saying "c'est le must".

214pgmcc
Jul 3, 2013, 4:58 pm

#213 In France they also use the words, "le weekend", "le pullover", etc... The Académie française is very annoyed.

215Boobalack
Jul 3, 2013, 5:25 pm

ejj1955, I only took one year of French and have regretted not taking more ever since. Le sigh.

Our local newspaper uses terrible grammar and many incorrect words. "Had ran" makes my head hurt. The dance recital ended with a courtesy (curtsy) by the performers. The list is endless.

I used the word "like" in a simile and was told it was incorrect. True or false?

216Mr.Durick
Edited: Jul 3, 2013, 6:11 pm

'He smiled like a Cheshire cat' is correct; was your simile like that? 'Winston tastes good like a cigarette should' is not a simile and was reckoned wrong when the advertisement was current. Still my native speaker sensitivity and a little bit of thought accepts the 'like' in the second example.

Robert

217Boobalack
Jul 3, 2013, 8:41 pm

The first example explains it.

Today the local newspaper printed "dire straights" in a story. Oh, my.

218rolandperkins
Jul 4, 2013, 1:43 am

217>
Right, straights are only "dire" if your opponent draws to them.

219ejj1955
Jul 4, 2013, 3:29 am

>218 rolandperkins: LOL, if that's acceptable in this forum.

One of my peeves is the "took the reigns" usage. I don't know why rain/reign/rein are confused in meaning just because they sound alike . . . well, I suppose that is the reason. Duh.

220pgmcc
Jul 4, 2013, 4:11 am

The rein in Spain falls manely on the plane.

I love the sound of teeth grating all over the world.

;)

221Booksloth
Jul 4, 2013, 5:15 am

I guess there are just a hell of a lot of assumptions being made here about other people. I'd give quite a bit to know who on earth are the people who don't know or understand the words 'queue' or 'caravan' and I personally don't know anyone who doesn't understand 'de rigeur' (or if I do, I haven't heard about it). In the interests of being understood by all, there's something to be said for appealing to the lowest common denominator but it leads to a terrible paucity of language.

#204 Sometimes, of course, you can sink even lower and just use emoticons - :P

222pgmcc
Jul 4, 2013, 5:58 am

Or the good old sarcasticon..

223thorold
Jul 4, 2013, 3:18 pm

I suspect that the people who aren't familiar with "queue" and "caravan" may be Americans, who have "line" and "trailer" instead.

The English way of using "queue" might be a little puzzling to the French as well: they most commonly use it for "tail" (in every sense including the rude ones) and prefer "file" for a line of people waiting for something, but they do say "faire la queue" for the verb to queue. "Caravan" is of course originally Persian, came to English from French in its original sense of camels and desert, was misused by the English to describe a wagon with living accommodation, and was borrowed back by the French with that sense sometime in the nineteenth century.

224msladylib
Jul 4, 2013, 9:05 pm

>191 trishpaw: You might, just might, succeed by using the word "idea" slightly pointedly several times right after she makes this mistake. I don't hold out much hope, though. If she is indeed a dear friend, write her a letter and deliberately correct her. If she gets insulted, give it time.

225Collectorator
Jul 4, 2013, 10:04 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

226PhaedraB
Jul 4, 2013, 10:33 pm

225 > Unless you're in the American Northeast, in which case you get on line. I'm from the Midwest, so that always sounds wrong to me. The only time I get online is to post here 'n' stuff.

227thorold
Edited: Jul 5, 2013, 4:01 am

>225 Collectorator:
In British use nowadays the most common sense is "towable house on wheels". You'd be extremely unlikely to hear it in the original sense of "people travelling together" unless it was in a context that involved sand, camels and tea-towels.

According to the OED, it started being used in the 17th and 18th century for a covered vehicle carrying a group of travellers (hence the modern word "van"), was briefly adopted in the early days of railways to describe third-class carriages (the only sort in which groups of strangers would travel together at that time), and from there it shifted to describe the horse-drawn houses-on-wheels used by gypsies, which were a similar size and shape. So what's now the usual British sense is (a) decidedly local in its origins and (b) only grew up in the 19th century. It does seem to appear occasionally in the US, though: Christopher Morley uses it to describe the horse-drawn van in Parnassus on wheels, for instance.

The British normally use "trailer" to describe something you tow that is not a mobile home (I think you would call that a "U-Haul") and "van" for a covered road vehicle for transporting something other than passengers.

228Collectorator
Jul 5, 2013, 4:17 am

This member has been suspended from the site.

229Booksloth
Jul 5, 2013, 5:38 am

All of which, I guess, goes to show that different people, not to mention different cultures, use the same words differently; even one family in the same town or village has a quite different vocabulary from their neighbours. While I've met a lot of people who accuse others of 'flexing their intellectual muscles' because they haven't understood what the other person said, I've yet to meet anyone who thinks of themselves as doing that because they are just using the words that come naturally to them (in unrehearsed, unwritten speech, at least).

230pgmcc
Jul 5, 2013, 12:49 pm

#228 Collectorator

In Ireland, and I presume Britain too, one would refer to a motor home as a camper van. There are some big camper vans on this side of the Atlantic, especially on mainland Europe, but they tend not to be as big as the ones in North America. I have hear the term "motor home" being used here too, but camper van is much more usual.

I have seen a few camper vans towing cars, but, given the size of the roads over here, it is more common to see a camper van with bicycles attached to a holding frame at the back.

231rolandperkins
Edited: Jul 5, 2013, 6:02 pm

"The French prefer "file" (to queue) for a line. . ."

Iʻve heard that the verb ʻfiler" comes into the French equivalent for the military slang "to take French leave":
it is "filer a lʻanglais" which I suppose would mean "to line up ENGLISH-style"!

232Boobalack
Jul 5, 2013, 9:38 pm

"Hourra pour les differences!"

233CliffordDorset
Jul 7, 2013, 3:25 pm

One point that's so far not emerged is the scope that French words offer the English as malapropisms. 'Mange tout, Rodney, mange tout!'

My apologies to the non-British anglophones who will have missed my (probably untranslatable) televisual reference.

234thorold
Jul 8, 2013, 3:32 am

>230 pgmcc:
I think "camper van" is relatively recent in the UK: when my parents briefly flirted with the idea of buying one, ca. 1970, the standard term was "motor caravan", but many people referred to them informally as "Dormobiles" (from the brand name of a big coachbuilding firm). "Camper van" was current in Australia when I was there in the late 80s: maybe it came to the UK from there (most of the people driving around Europe in VW Combis were of antipodean origin anyway).

>233 CliffordDorset:
...and of course perfectly legitimate but silly constructions like "frappons la route" and Terence Rattigan's "Elle a des idées au-dessus de sa gare."

235jbbarret
Jul 8, 2013, 4:56 am

>234 thorold: And "caravanette" was (perhaps still is) another term for "motor caravan".

236thorold
Edited: Jul 8, 2013, 6:00 am

Yes, I'd forgotten "caravanette". One of the many "-ette" words of the mid-20th century that have vanished from our vocabularies...

BTW: A totally new pet peeve: the unnecessary and usually incorrect use of "encompasses" as a fancy word for "includes". There's a beautiful example of the trouble this can get you into in this recent talk post, presumably copied from a BBC press release: Told here in five acts, the central arc of the narrative encompasses... — some unfortunate PR person has strung two clichés together (that being what PR people are paid to do) but failed to reflect on what the words actually mean, thus arriving at a geometrical impossibility.
(And a dangling participle for good measure: the BBC PR department always seems to have trouble writing about poetry for some reason.)

237pgmcc
Jul 9, 2013, 4:34 pm

#234 Thorold, thank you for reminding me of "Dormobile". I had forgotten that term.

238pgmcc
Jul 9, 2013, 4:37 pm

233

I'm a non-British Anglophone but I got it. Good old Del Boy!

239pgmcc
Jul 9, 2013, 4:40 pm

#236
Speaking of clichés, my son was watching a holiday camp show with my wife last week. He got fed up with the show and got up to go. As he was leaving he informed my wife that he was suffering from an overdose of cliché poisoning.

240barney67
Edited: Jul 9, 2013, 8:48 pm

I've never heard "caravan" used as a verb. I don't hear it much at all, noun or verb. I doubt many people use it in conversation. I'm more likely to hear the word "convoy," also as a noun, but I rarely hear that one either except in reference to a terrible song from the 1970s, when it became a term used mainly by truck drivers to describe a line of trucks.

241Collectorator
Jul 9, 2013, 9:25 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

242pgmcc
Jul 10, 2013, 3:44 am

10-4 Rubber Duck

243JerryMmm
Jul 10, 2013, 8:14 am

I thought it came from the film

244Osbaldistone
Jul 10, 2013, 5:54 pm

>242 pgmcc:, 243
Mercy sakes, good buddy! Looks like we got ourselves a convoy!

Hated that song, but it was everywhere back then, and it's a permanent part of my brain, I guess.

Os.

245Boobalack
Jul 10, 2013, 7:59 pm

30-12, pgmcc

246pgmcc
Jul 11, 2013, 1:48 am

LOL
It's the way you tell 'em, Boobalack.

;)

247Boobalack
Jul 12, 2013, 11:16 pm

::laffin'::
It took my husband a while to get that. lol

For anyone else who didn't get it, 30-12 is a big 10-4.

248msladylib
Jul 21, 2013, 7:04 am

>226 PhaedraB: I'm very much in the American Northeast, and I've only ever got "in line." To me, "on line" sounds odd. Right now, of course, I'm online.

249PhaedraB
Jul 21, 2013, 1:57 pm

248 > Another reminder that I must always remember never to say "never" or "always."

250Boobalack
Jul 21, 2013, 3:42 pm

Good one, PhaedraB!

251darrow
Aug 21, 2013, 12:50 pm

Saw this advert today: "SUMMER SALE: 20% off on all of our kitchens". Doesn't sound like a sale to me.

252Osbaldistone
Aug 21, 2013, 1:34 pm

>1 justjim:
Well, I hate to be pedantic ( :D ), and I'd bet this issue has come up elsewhere with this group, but shouldn't the OP be "I hope this will gather 'peevees' [sic] from both the previous threads"? I really doubt that this thread can do anything hopefully.

:)
Os.

253CliffordDorset
Aug 22, 2013, 6:34 pm

A select few of us who have worked in defence would define a 'peevee' as someone who had undergone positive vetting. I think I am liable to be shot (or at least imprisoned at Heathrow) for saying that. Please don't pass it on ...

Must dash ... someone at the door ...

254thorold
Aug 26, 2013, 5:00 am

Literal translation of the instructions on a product from one of our finest Dutch supermarkets: "Place in a heated frying pan without adding butter and/or oil and cook for 8 minutes"

255JerryMmm
Aug 26, 2013, 8:57 am

cook instead of fry?

256thorold
Edited: Aug 26, 2013, 9:05 am

It was the "and/or" I was worried about. "Cook" is just an artefact of my translation.

I didn't have any butter, so I had to fry them without oil.

257darrow
Sep 19, 2013, 9:07 am

Just heard a radio interview in which the interviewee replied "absolutely" instead of "yes" at every opportunity.

258Booksloth
Sep 20, 2013, 5:22 am

#257 Put that one down to nerves. I was interviewed on the radio some years ago and found myself doing exactly the same. I would never dream of doing it in ordinary speech so I can only assume it's some kind of glitch that happens in the brain when confronted with a radio mic. :(

259thorold
Edited: Sep 20, 2013, 5:57 am

>257 darrow:,258
Probably not just nerves: when you're being interviewed you're aware that it's not going to sound very interesting if you just say "yes" and "no" (or even worse "Mmphm" and "Uh-uh"). Saying something like "Absolutely" gives you the chance to put more of the missing body-language into your intonation, and it also gives you a little bit of extra time to prepare what you're going to say next to follow on from the affirmative. It's the same thing that makes some habitual interviewees start every answer with "Well, Brian, ..."

I've often noticed that even something as unremarkable as a video-conference between colleagues who know each other well makes people change their speech patterns.

260PhaedraB
Sep 20, 2013, 1:21 pm

258, 259 > Those verbal tics--um, er, uh, yes Brian--are mostly unconscious strategies to give the brain time to think up an answer.

Many moons ago, I worked for a PR firm that among other things gave executives media training. To avoid the "um, er" stall, they'd have them practice saying things such as, "That's a very good question, Brian," or paraphrase the question back to the interviewer.

After a bit of this, they'd tell the guy they needed to move the training from one conference room to another one on another floor. Halfway there, he would be the target of a "media ambush." A bunch of employees would be recruited to carry cameras and microphones, surround the guy and start firing questions. It was a nice little stress test so they could see what they needed to focus on for the rest of the training.

At any rate, if you watch politicians or businessmen on TV, they use these little strategies all the time. Of course, these days it's not so much that they're stalling to think of an answer as they're stalling as they flip through the stack of mental index cards looking for the proper talking point to parrot back. If the answers sound rehearsed, they are, even more than they used to be.

I can promise you, spend a few years around PR people and your view of the media--all media--gets pretty cynical. The firm I worked for went on,after I was gone, to represent the government of Kuwait. Their great achievement for that client was manipulating not just the media and the public but government itself into the first Gulf War. Remember the congressional testimony where the tearful girl told the story (later proved to be fiction) about babies being tossed from incubators? That was the fine work of my former employer.

261suitable1
Sep 20, 2013, 2:16 pm

# 202 - Paper tape

Not only have I used paper tape for programming on a CDC 6600, but I've also handled miles of Baudot (five-bit) coded paper tape. At least one can't drop tape and get things out of order like cards.

262EricJT
Sep 22, 2013, 11:20 am

260 > When working in the British Civil Service I had a job which involved doing radio phone-ins. Before I did the first one, I told the press officer who was accompanying me that I was very nervous because of the range of topics that might be covered. (I edited Social Trends, a wide-ranging statistical compendium.) He told me not to worry, as phone-ins were the easiest of all broadcasts with which to deal. There was, he assured me, no need to answer the questions the callers actually asked, as they never got a come-back.

263PhaedraB
Sep 23, 2013, 6:28 pm

A comment to a Facebook post I made moments ago: "There's been a big campagne about that issue..."

Took me a moment while I was trying to puzzle out what misspelled sparkling wine had to do with the issue.

264Osbaldistone
Sep 25, 2013, 1:00 am

>263 PhaedraB:
Well, a 'big campagne' I would take issue with. But a 'big champagne'? not so bad.

265pgmcc
Sep 25, 2013, 6:44 am

#263 & #264 'big campagne'

That was a great western.

266PhaedraB
Sep 25, 2013, 4:26 pm

264 > Agreed!

267thorold
Sep 26, 2013, 3:05 am

>264 Osbaldistone:, 266 'big champagne'

Wouldn't that be "Big Champagne, P.I."?

268CDVicarage
Oct 1, 2013, 4:22 am

In today's Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/30/10-grammar-rules-you-can-forget

And 657 comments so far despite, it seems, most of them saying that grammar rules don't matter. (I haven't read them all!)

269pgmcc
Oct 1, 2013, 5:29 am

It is interesting how a journalist is deciding what is good grammar and what is not.

This is rather Orwellian in my opinion.

Lunatics and asylums spring to mind.

270ScarletBea
Oct 3, 2013, 3:07 am

Last week I got really annoyed at a huge error on the Sky ad poster for 'The Face', it said "Who's team are you on?"
ARGH!
I posted on their forum to complain, but of course nobody paid attention :(

271CliffordDorset
Oct 3, 2013, 9:11 am

As their advert says: 'You can do better'!

272Mr.Durick
Oct 24, 2013, 5:21 pm

A cliché by any other name:

‘beats to her own drum’

Robert

273PhaedraB
Oct 24, 2013, 6:10 pm

272 > Well, there are folks who do that. My late husband used to describe his drumming skills with the expression "differently rhythmed."

274Osbaldistone
Oct 25, 2013, 9:10 pm

>273 PhaedraB: rhythmed
I hope that's not a real word - it won't look right no matter how you spell it!

Os.

276ScarletBea
Edited: Nov 2, 2013, 12:37 pm

The other day at work I had to use the cupboard where we keep envelopes, pens, etc, for the first time, which is in a closed section (that's why I hadn't seen it before).
I laughed out loud when I saw the label someone put on the door, and thought "well, I hope so, we wouldn't want cupboards going around rambling through the plant..." - it said "Stationary" :)

277Boobalack
Nov 2, 2013, 5:44 pm

//Laffin'. Yes, that might cause some horrible accidents.//

278thorold
Edited: Nov 5, 2013, 8:52 am

One that seems to appear more and more often lately is people using "1800s", "1900s", etc. to refer to a century rather than a decade. I suppose there could be a justification if you particularly want to distinguish 1900-1999 from 1901-2000, but otherwise, what's wrong with saying "20th century"? It's particularly annoying if you're trying to use tags to search for things related to the first decade of the century: it looks as though there's still a small majority on LT who use "1900s" for 1900-1909, but "1800s", "1700s", etc. have all been combined with their respective centuries, which presumably indicates that very few people bother to distinguish individual decades before the 20th century.

279Boobalack
Nov 5, 2013, 4:12 pm

Our local newspaper is a constant source of irritation. Yesterday, for example, there was a sentence stating that the suspect alluded the police. We have performances in this town that end with a courtesy. Terrible grammar and many misspelled words abound. I have very politely mentioned this to the editor there, but it makes no difference. The newspaper is an embarrassment. Grrrrrrrrr! It felt good to get that off my chest.

280Booksloth
Nov 6, 2013, 5:49 am

#279 Local news can have that effect. The only time it annoyed me enough to actually write in and complain to my local press was when they printed an interview with a gentleman who, at that time, was thought to be our oldest citizen, having been born in 1905. The article began with the words "When John Smith was born, Queen Victoria was on the throne". I couldn't resist pointing out that if that were the case there might have been something of a fumigation problem at the palace, since she died in 1901. Not a grammatical slip-up for once but another of those instances that make you wonder what editors do these days.

281PhaedraB
Nov 6, 2013, 1:37 pm

My local small-town newspaper had an article about a new business opening near the "laundry mat." I couldn't resist posting a comment asking whether copy editors were still in their employ (probably not in this day and age). Then a few days later, someone used "laundry mat" in a Facebook comment. I give. I'll still be annoyed, but it seems the world has passed me by on this one.

282Novak
Nov 6, 2013, 5:00 pm

> 280 There was often a "fumigation problem" when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

283Boobalack
Nov 6, 2013, 5:15 pm

//I wish we had a "like" button! I think you all are right -- no copy editors, no proofreaders. They're all at the laundry mat washing their dirty socks.//

284krogub
Nov 6, 2013, 6:03 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

285rolandperkins
Edited: Nov 6, 2013, 9:32 pm

". . .someone used "laundry mat" in a Facebook comment."

I think that, because the suffix "-mat" has become so
rare, it's natural to make the noun "mat" out of it, without to mention attention to the
strict meaning of "mat". Come to think of it, outside of Tonga, I haven't seen/heard the WORD "mat" used much, either. But it is commoner than the suffix "-mat".
Can anyone think of
a "-mat" SUFFIX, other than "automat"? If not, then that suffix is a real "blast from the past".

286binders
Nov 6, 2013, 9:47 pm

er, Cybermat?
-matic is much easier to think of, as in systematic, hydromatic, ultramatic...perhaps -mat got lost in transmission.

287Boobalack
Nov 6, 2013, 9:50 pm

//Today in the local excuse for a newspaper, there was an article about the Fist Amendment. It was in the headline of the article. Gaaaaaaaaaaah!//

288PhaedraB
Edited: Nov 6, 2013, 10:51 pm

Just found a book published with the wonderfully oxymoronic title, Unpublished Drawings.

289rolandperkins
Nov 7, 2013, 12:46 am

Thanks, binders, for
""cybermat /cybermatic".
(285>286)
The "-mat-" is probably not part of a suffix, but comes from a Greek
plural noun (I assume it would be from "kubermata"
- - literally "steerings"). The same, I'm pretty sure is true of "systematic" : from "sustemata".

290thorold
Nov 7, 2013, 12:51 am

>285 rolandperkins:
What about the humble bathmat? My spelling checker doesn't recognize it, so presumably it's gone out of fashion. What do Americans stand on when they come out of the shower?

291rolandperkins
Nov 7, 2013, 12:57 am

I think
bathmat is considered an ordinary compound noun:
bath+ mat, not a noun-or-adjective with a suffix, of the "laundroMAT" type.

(My spellcheck, b t w, also considers "bathmat" a misspelling.)

292PhaedraB
Nov 7, 2013, 1:45 am

Laundromat was a portmanteau word combining laundry and Automat, a coin-operated cafeteria, which itself was a back-formation of automatic. Laundromat was originally a trade name for a particular brand of coin-operated washing machine, then became a generic term for coin-operated laundries.

293thorold
Nov 7, 2013, 3:41 am

>291 rolandperkins:,292
The OED says that "Automat" as cafeteria came directly from German, the first one in Philadelphia in 1902 being modelled on a similar restaurant in Berlin. "Automat" is of course still the normal German word for any automatic device, especially for a vending-machine(*), and there are similar words in several other languages.

The OED says that "automat" has existed in English since the 17th century as an occasional variant of "automaton". It identifies the "-mat" suffix as coming from "Automat" (cafeteria) and appearing mainly in trade-names: "... Only a few have attained wide currency, e.g. laundermat n., Laundromat n., Rotissomat n., and washomat n."

(*) Incidentally - isn't it rather odd how the verb "vend" has disappeared completely from everyday English, but we still use it in a few derived words like "vending-machine" and "vendor"?

294Novak
Edited: Nov 7, 2013, 7:13 am

>290 thorold: What do Americans stand on when they come out of the shower?

So many American authors put a "sink" in the bathroom. The rest of the world only has a sink in the kitchen.

And, I'm no one's doormat.

Also:

Just finish cleaning up this flat
Then walk yourself to the laundromat
And when you've finished doin' that
Bring in the dog an' put out the cat.


A brilliant piece of rhyme. Now let's do it again in English

Just finish cleaning up this flette
Then walk yourself to the laundrette
And when you've finished doin' thette
Bring in the dog an' put out the cette.


No thanks. I'll stick with the American version.

295CliffordDorset
Nov 7, 2013, 8:20 am

The OED agrees with me in defining 'a mat' as 'a tangled or interwoven mass'. It is one of the structures of matter (no pun intended), formed in a haphazard or random way. The production of felt from a liquid-based suspension of short fibres by draining and compressing is a typical matting process. It is related to the way a cat manufactures 'fur balls'

The OED also accepts the very different case brought up in this thread:

"Forming nouns (typically proprietary or brand names) denoting either a device which operates automatically or a business consisting of automatic or self-service equipment."

The OED indicates that this is originally a US usage.

296thorold
Nov 7, 2013, 12:43 pm

>294 Novak:
Come off it: there are probably about as many people alive today who say "flette" as there are strawberry leaves on a duke's coronet. And most of those have never actually seen a residential property where you can get to the kitchen without a map.

I suspect that there aren't all that many Americans who say "flat", either. Don't they all live in condoms or apahdments?

297Collectorator
Nov 7, 2013, 2:22 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

298Boobalack
Nov 8, 2013, 7:25 pm

Oh, my. lol

299Osbaldistone
Nov 8, 2013, 9:04 pm

Okay, time to catch up
279 - courtesy is an old form of curtsy. You'll find it in 19th c. literature. Perhaps it's making a comeback.

294 - if you don't have a sink in the bathroom, where do you wash your hands. This is, of course, assuming you have a toilet in the bathroom and should wash your hands before you leave.

296 - you're right...Americans rarely, if ever, live in 'flats'. And an American that says he lives in a condom is either bragging or hopeful! If we're not living in a house, a duplex (or even a fourplex), Americans usually live in apartments, condos, and townhouses.

Os.

300CDVicarage
Nov 9, 2013, 3:38 am

In Britain the sink, if in a bathroom, is usually called a basin or wash baisin. The sink is in the kichen.

301pgmcc
Nov 9, 2013, 6:31 am

#299 Osbaldistone, when you say, "townhouse", what do you mean?

Originally it used to mean one's house in town as opposed to one's country pile (big stately home - a pile of bricks and mortar made into a mansion) and the town-house could have been an equally majestic mansion with grounds around it.

When I was growing up in Belfast there were many "terraced" houses which were rows of connected homes (two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs with outside toilets - often referred to as two-up/two-down) and these had been originally built by industrialists as housing for their workers. As time moved on and estate agents attempted to sell these homes the term "terraced house" was abandoned and the estate agents started to use "town-house" to refer to a terraced house. In this situation a townhouse might be used to describe a small terraced house or a large, majestic terraced house as one might find in London's richer neighbourhoods.

302Morphidae
Nov 9, 2013, 8:03 am

Sounds like your terraced houses are our townhouses - basically connected houses. Usually there are five or six connected but there can be upwards of ten or more. However, ours have the toilets on the inside! Also like yours, they can be small and cheap or large and lavish.

303pgmcc
Nov 9, 2013, 8:34 am

#302 That sound the same as here.

In the 1960s it was common to find people having plumbing installed in their terraced houses with bathrooms being added. I knew several families who used the bath for coal rather than for washing. Baths were new-fangled contraptions.

Many of those houses have been flattened and replaced by more modern accommodation but where they remain they have been renovated with the latest mod-cons and decoration, and the estate agents have a field day in promoting them. I wonder if estate agents as a group are responsible for more new words and new meanings for words (e.g. unique) than any other group.

304Morphidae
Nov 9, 2013, 11:13 am

>303 pgmcc: Something like this?

305pgmcc
Nov 9, 2013, 11:20 am

Those would be the modern "townhouses".

The pictures on the website below would be the type of thing I was describing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-15823146

306Morphidae
Nov 9, 2013, 11:24 am

Wow, that last picture of row after row of those was intense. Just wow.

307JerryMmm
Nov 9, 2013, 6:07 pm

I always thought the two up two down is how you reached the door... I know it from No milk today..

308Boobalack
Nov 9, 2013, 6:08 pm

#299, thanks. Courtesy as curtsy may be making a comeback, but I seriously doubt that the writers of our newspaper are that intelligent. For example, in an article yesterday about some stolen money, the owners of the money had placed it in plastic bags and had written the bill denominations on the outside of the bags. On one was wrote $10, on another was wrote $5 and so on. I blame my seventh grade teacher for my extreme dislike of incorrect English grammar. Thank you, Mrs. Dodd.

309Booksloth
Nov 10, 2013, 5:42 am

#307 It's really weird when you realise you've had the lyrics to a song correct all these years but misinterpreted the meaning - takes ages for that new image to form in your head :)

310JerryMmm
Nov 10, 2013, 8:50 am

Ya, I pictured some backroom you had to go 2 stairs up and 2 stairs down again to reach it.

Great song anyway.

311Novak
Nov 10, 2013, 5:50 pm

>309 Booksloth: As kids in church we sang "Gladly the Cross I'd bear". I was sure we were singing about a cross-eyed bear who was called "Gladly".

312thorold
Nov 11, 2013, 4:05 am

>311 Novak:
Come off it: even my grandfather thought of that as a very old joke...!

The hymn in question is a Moody & Sankey-era thing from 1894, written by the prolific American evangelist Fanny Crosby. As the teddy bear was invented in 1903, I'm sure someone (probably a newspaper columnist, if you really look into it) must have made the connection well before the First World War. And I doubt whether there would be many British chapels where they were still using Moody & Sankey material much after the 1940s.

Throughout my childhood, whenever salad appeared on the table, my father would feel impelled to say "Lettuce, with a gladsome mind!" That sort of experience can mark a child for life...

313jbbarret
Nov 11, 2013, 5:45 am

Reminds me of Billy Connolly saying that as a lad he thought that they were singing "a wain in a manger".
And Dave Allen, as a boy at a funeral, thought that the priest said " in the name of the father, and of the son, and into the hole he goes".

314Novak
Edited: Nov 11, 2013, 6:03 am

Oh Boy.. .. .." I am the lord of the dance settee."

>312 thorold: Thanks for the suggestion that I couldn't have been singing in church in the 1940s. I have a job believing it myself sometimes.. .. :o)

315pgmcc
Nov 11, 2013, 6:46 am

#312 Which reminds me of the Honeymoon Salad - "Lettuce alone".

316CliffordDorset
Nov 11, 2013, 12:38 pm

For those readers inclined to say 'Wow' on seeing the terrace frontage, you should know that the 'two-up-two-down' isn't the whole story. There was a smaller variety of this basic idea in which there was no rear exit, because each back wall was shared between terraces looking in opposite directions. This was, as you'd expect, known as the 'back-to-back'. Wasn't leading the the Industrial Revolution just wonderful?

At least with a proper two-up-two-down a house could have a small yard to scrub the clothes and hang out the washing. The place I spent my childhood in was able to have a coal-house adjacent to the outside toilet. The family moved, leaving it like that, in 1956.

Remember too that a flushing toilet was once a luxury. The toilet (actually called the privy, or in the North-East of England the 'netty') was at the end of the yard and had a small door out into the 'back street', through which the 'night soil man' would do his shovelling before dawn. (When their jobs disappeared with improving hygiene, it is believed these men went into politics.)

317pgmcc
Nov 11, 2013, 12:45 pm

#316 That explains a lot.

318Booksloth
Nov 12, 2013, 4:53 am

#316 Remember too that a flushing toilet was once a luxury.

And that while certain sectors of the population were aspiring to the indoor flushing toilet, other sectors thought this was the height of poor hygeine. A room actually inside the house where people empitied their bodily wastes? Yeuch!!!

319jbbarret
Nov 12, 2013, 5:02 am

Notwithstanding the guzunder.

320rolandperkins
Nov 12, 2013, 6:14 am

"thought they were singing 'a wain in a manger' . . ."
(313)

what I used to wonder (some 75 years ago) about a carol was why there were
"Herald Angels" but no
"Globe* Angels, "Post Angels" or "Record/American Angels".

*Boston was a 4-newspaper town in those days (down from 5 in the previous decade): The Globe, the "old" (as we call it now) Herald, the Post
and the Record-American (still survives as the current
Herald). We were a "Globe"
family. Still survives, but is, I hear,owned by the New York Times Corporation.

321Novak
Nov 12, 2013, 7:13 am

Yeah.. .. but.. “Hark The New York Times Angels Sing” does lose a little in translation.

322jbbarret
Edited: Feb 10, 2014, 3:12 am

The"Oxford Dictionaries Online Word Of The Day" for today happens to be mondegreen.

Sound the battle cry, Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward.

323thorold
Feb 10, 2014, 5:54 am

Spotted in an LT review just now: "I was roaming the isles of my local {book} store..."

...what a shame it wasn't a review of a Robert Louis Stevenson book!

324ScarletBea
Feb 10, 2014, 7:12 am

323: A floating bookshop, that's what it was!

325Boobalack
Feb 11, 2014, 9:18 pm

Clever, ScarletBea!

326ScarletBea
Edited: Feb 12, 2014, 1:46 pm

Thanks ;)

Anyway, this week a few signs have appeared in the ladies' toilets at work, advising people to use the containers "inside the cubical".
I couldn't resist! Picked up a pen and corrected every single poster....
*sigh*

327Boobalack
Feb 12, 2014, 6:41 pm

Yay, you!

Our local newspaper had an article about "singing" day, in which it was announced where some of the graduating athletes would be going to college. I didn't know any of them could sing that well.

328Sophie236
Edited: Feb 13, 2014, 9:27 am

Current pet peeve - authors who have convinced themselves that "biceps" is a plural. I'm getting weary of adding an "s" to "bicep" in countless recent novels .... Also, there seems to be a fashion for using "slither" when the author intends to say "sliver". Grrr.

329Boobalack
Feb 13, 2014, 2:27 pm

I just read a book in which the author referred twice to the "internment" of bodies. Not only that, she used "born" and not "borne" in several places.

330PhaedraB
Feb 13, 2014, 3:07 pm

I was thinking of keeping a list of howlers from Facebook, but that's just low-hanging fruit.

I read an entire book (indie published) that had "it's" and "its" transposed in every single instance. I didn't know whether to be sad for the author, the editor or the word-processing program.

331rolandperkins
Edited: Feb 13, 2014, 6:47 pm

using "slither" when the author intends to say "sliver" (330)

A similar malapropism was often heard in the '60s:
"to WRECK havoc", where "to WREAK* havoc"
was intended. It did have a sort of logic to it,
but not the logic of traditional usage, because it
usually had to do with a situation where some
"wreckage" had occurred.

"wreak" I guess is an archaic form of "work". and
I've never known its object to be anyting
but "havoc".

332r.orrison
Feb 13, 2014, 7:37 pm

Check out https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+slither
I hear it a lot and find it really annoying, but apparently it's not wrong.

333thorold
Feb 14, 2014, 4:33 am

>331 rolandperkins:
Actually, it turns out that "wreak" and "wreck" are closely linked etymologically: both come from "wrecan", which originally meant to force something to move or drive it (i.e. a wreck is something driven onto the coast). More recently the most common meaning of "wreak" was to express or inflict something (an emotion, punishment, revenge, etc.). So "wreak havoc" could actually have started out conveying the same idea as in Shakespeare's "Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war" (which in any case is frequently misquoted as "Wreak havoc and let loose..."). But nowadays "wreak havoc" seems to be used as though it means the same as "work havoc", probably as rolandperkins suggests because people got confused by "wrought" and didn't realise it was the past tense of "work".

334CliffordDorset
Feb 14, 2014, 7:00 am

>333 thorold:
Thank you, Thorold. Your summary of the word is appropriately concise for this string, but readers should be aware that 'wreak' has a pedigree - expounded at length in the OED - which I found amazing, even though, as rolandperkins says, the present state of poverty of our language ('We're all in it together' - D Cameron) has reduced it to a single cliché in which 'havoc' is invariably attached. Not only can 'wreak' be a noun, dating back for many centuries, it has a huge range of verbal use nuances, which were used as recently as the nineteenth century. For example:

Tennyson: 'Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son'
Swinburne: ' I would the deed Were done, the wreak of wrath were wroken, and I Dead.'
Dickens: ' In the fog..the unpopular steamer..always was..wreaking destruction upon somebody or something'
Shelley: 'The wreathed Serpent..did ever seek Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak.'

A truly wonderful word, whose resuscitation should be swiftly wroken, indeed.

335thorold
Edited: Feb 14, 2014, 7:45 am

Yes, it's a great word, very strong sounds, with a very Anglo-Saxon flavour to it. Ideal for nineteenth-century poets, especially if you need a bit of alliteration. "Yet God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar; /
And many a darkness into the light shall leap" (Tennyson) or "O Scotland! shall it e'er be mine / To wreak thy wrongs in battle-line." (Scott)

336Boobalack
Feb 14, 2014, 6:58 pm

One of my peeves is when "vigil" is pronounced as "vigual," or however it is spelled; when "jail" is pronounced as "jell;" when "hail" is pronounced as "hell;" when "oil" is pronounce as "ohl;" when "tire" is pronounced as "tar." The list goes on. Realizing that these are regional differences and that I surely mispronounce words occasionally, I try very hard not to be bothered by this, but there are times…Sigh.

337Osbaldistone
Feb 20, 2014, 12:09 am

>336 Boobalack:
We got lots a ohl wells here in Texas!!! But most of the wells making money these days are gas wells. Not nearly as romantic.

Os.

338Boobalack
Feb 20, 2014, 5:55 pm

#337 -- Plenty of ohl wells in Oklahoma, too. :-}

Phrases I don't like -- "free gift," "very unique."

339ScarletBea
Jun 25, 2014, 1:33 pm

My local Sainsbury's has been refurbished, and they changed the location of clothes and home stuff, replacing all signs.
Unfortunately, they still (I'd complained before) can't spell/don't know their grammar, and all the signs still say "WOMENS".

*banging my head in despair*

340Boobalack
Jun 25, 2014, 6:57 pm

There was a story in our local newspaper about a dog that had disappeared from his pin. The pin was still locked, and there was no damage to the pin, but the dog was still gone. Can't say that I blame him. That pin probably stuck him every time he moved.

341thorold
Jul 1, 2014, 7:00 am

Just saw another old favourite - in a spam message, no less.

"{our website} is an unvaluable thing"

Good to see that there are still a few honest spammers out there!

342Boobalack
Jul 3, 2014, 10:48 pm

Continue on. Continue stands alone when used as a verb, at least in my opinion.

Most unique. How can anything be most one of a kind?

343pgmcc
Jul 4, 2014, 11:24 am

>342 Boobalack: Most unique. How can anything be most one of a kind?

I am right there with you Boobalack but we have been betrayed by the OED which now has two definitions for unique: 1. one of a kind; 2. Interesting.

Blah!

344Boobalack
Jul 4, 2014, 10:32 pm

Double Blah! ;-}

345pgmcc
Jul 16, 2014, 5:09 pm

The video "Word Crimes" should appeal to people here. You may have to watch an advertisement first.

http://vevo.ly/yRwiKB

346Morphidae
Jul 16, 2014, 9:18 pm

>345 pgmcc: I posted that earlier today in the group on the thread Group Theme Song. I am pouting because no one has commented.

347PhaedraB
Jul 16, 2014, 9:50 pm

>346 Morphidae: I had no comment, but if I could have "liked" that post, I would have.

348Boobalack
Jul 16, 2014, 10:03 pm

That made me laugh!

349Morphidae
Jul 16, 2014, 10:11 pm

>347 PhaedraB: >348 Boobalack: It really is fun. I like it better than the original!

350ScarletBea
Jul 23, 2014, 2:59 am

This being a site for reading people, it's amazing how many people can't write *sigh*
Both little spelling and grammar errors, but also how to construct sentences, write in paragraphs, etc.
You'd think they see enough of the written word to learn...

(just a bit frustrated, now)

351Morphidae
Jul 23, 2014, 9:03 am

>350 ScarletBea: You're missing a period in the first sentence. And capitalization and a period in the last sentence.

(This *is* the pedants' corner, you know.) Ha!

352ScarletBea
Jul 23, 2014, 1:37 pm

:)

353pgmcc
Jul 23, 2014, 3:09 pm

>351 Morphidae: Isn't there a grammar rule about starting a sentence with a conjunction, or is that a matter of style?

;-)

354Morphidae
Edited: Jul 23, 2014, 3:48 pm

>353 pgmcc: Then there is the rule where whenever you correct someone else's post, you make a mistake yourself.

(Couldn't you have made just one to prove my point?)

355pgmcc
Jul 23, 2014, 3:53 pm

>354 Morphidae: I have fallen foul of that rule so many times I have my posts vetted by a bank of grammarians and three lawyers before posting. :-)

Even with that level of precaution I still make mistakes like what some people do! ;)

356suitable1
Jul 23, 2014, 3:58 pm

>351 Morphidae:
>355 pgmcc:

Shouldn't the second sentence have a verb? (And capitalization and a period in the last sentence.)

357Morphidae
Jul 23, 2014, 4:01 pm

*whimpers*

358Boobalack
Jul 24, 2014, 5:39 pm

I hate it when an author or anybody else uses a phrase such as, "an empty bottle of soda" or "an empty box of doughnuts." I am reading a book wherein the author refers to "an empty donut bag." Thank you Maggie Stiefvater. I knew I loved you for some reason.

359rocketjk
Aug 14, 2014, 7:31 pm

Well, I know that this thread has moved way beyond this point, now, but I just took a look here for the first time. As my dues to be able to refer to this again at this late date, I made myself read through the entire conversation. :)

152>

'If you don't mind me saying so ... '

In the interests of pedantry, I should point out that that ought to be "If you don't mind my saying so" ;-) (It's not you they might mind; it's the saying.)


In the interests of pendantry, I have been dying to chip in that the grammatical reason that it's "my" and not "me" is that in the sentence, "saying" is a gerund: a noun. It's the direct object of the clause, equivalent to "I like walking." So to modify "saying," you need an adjective, in this case a possessive adjective. So it's "my."

To put it more clearly, it's "If you don't mind my saying so" instead of "me saying so" for the same reason it's "I like your dancing," not, "I like you dancing."

Although I do see EricJT's point, too. One could say "I like you dancing" if the meaning is something like, "I like you dancing, much better than I like you talking." ( . . . or trying to explain grammar.)

Anyway, apologies for the long explanation of something everybody here probably already knows, but it's one of my favorite grammar rules. (Doesn't every pendant have favorite rules?) I can never resist expounding on it.

#353> "Isn't there a grammar rule about starting a sentence with a conjunction, or is that a matter of style?

My grad school education professor (I was learning to teach English comp) swore up and down that it was perfectly fine to start an independent clause with a coordinating conjunction. And that's what I've believed ever since.

Now I will contribute something of my own. I live in a small rural area, and the copywriters for local radio station ads are not always the keenest in terms of grammar and syntax. So today I heard the following:

"State Farm agents are one of a kind."

360JerryMmm
Aug 15, 2014, 5:41 am

>359 rocketjk: "State Farm agents are one of a kind."

Is that really so wrong? "Snowflakes are one of a kind" - Each snowflake is one of a kind.

361rocketjk
Aug 15, 2014, 12:17 pm

#360> In my opinion, yes, that's really wrong. You can always correct grammar by rewriting a sentence. So "Each snowflake is one of a kind" is correct and "Snowflakes are one of a kind" is wrong. Grammar-wise (sez I, anyway), it is not what the person meant, but what he/she actually wrote or said that determines whether a sentence is correct.

Additionally, as I see it, the point of the original sentence is different from your example. The idea is not that every State Farm agent is unique ("Each State Farm agent is one of a kind."). The idea is that State Farm agents as a group are better than the agents of the other companies. So the writer's responsibility, grammar/syntax-wise, was to come up with a way of communicating the superiority of State Farm agents as a group without the construction, "agents are one . . . "

We, for one, are not amused. :-)

362pgmcc
Aug 15, 2014, 7:15 pm

>359 rocketjk: A colleague of mine almost goes into a rage when he sees that someone has written, "Company X are going to introduce..." It is very common and he almost throws a tantrum when he sees it.

It is closely related to my pet peeve of people using a singular verb with a plural subject, e.g. "There's 5 cars..."

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

363Boobalack
Aug 16, 2014, 11:05 pm

How does one know that each snowflake is different? Has anyone examined each of them to be sure?

364ScarletBea
Dec 13, 2014, 11:00 am

This week in the UK there was a storm crossing the country, and a train company created a special page addressing the issue. I was so incredibly annoyed at the huge spelling mistake they had!
"How do high winds effect travel", in several places of that page, "how are you effected by the disruption", effect this and effect that, without people realising that effect is the noun and affect is the verb, argh

365messpots
Dec 13, 2014, 2:40 pm

If the high wind is behind you, it's effecting travel.

366PhaedraB
Dec 13, 2014, 5:02 pm

I've started collecting variations on voilà. Wah-lah is ubiquitous, of course, but the other day on Facebook I encountered welaah. Curious to see what will crop up next.

367rocketjk
Dec 13, 2014, 6:01 pm

#366> I believe welaah is a Native American word meaning, "I don't speak French."

368pgmcc
Dec 13, 2014, 7:14 pm

Welaah never!

369PhaedraB
Dec 14, 2014, 12:24 am

*snort*

370binders
Dec 14, 2014, 3:06 am

A former workmate used to say "viola" until the spelling was pointed out.

371Collectorator
Dec 14, 2014, 3:27 am

This member has been suspended from the site.

372pgmcc
Dec 14, 2014, 4:31 am

The poor viola.

How does one know a viola player is playing out of tune? The answer: One can see the bow moving.

373rolandperkins
Edited: Dec 14, 2014, 11:35 pm

". . .welaah is a Native American word meaning ʻI donʻt speak French.ʻ "
(366>367)

- - Not quite. But "Coup de Grace" is a French phrase meaning "Mow the lawn."

374PhaedraB
Dec 14, 2014, 11:41 pm

I love you guys.

375Boobalack
Dec 17, 2014, 7:45 pm

Me, too, PhaedraB!

376ScarletBea
Feb 5, 2015, 7:11 am

I saw a mention to a "critically acclaimed author" today on the BBC News site.
I know they meant 'by the critics', but it certainly doesn't read that way, right?

377thorold
Feb 5, 2015, 11:27 am

>376 ScarletBea:
The OED doesn't acknowledge "critcally = by critics", but Google Books has a few examples of "critically acclaimed" from before WWII, e.g. in an essay by John Galsworthy included in a 1933 collection (referring to Kipling). And "critical acclaim" has definitely been around in force since the 20s.

378ScarletBea
Feb 6, 2015, 2:10 am

>377 thorold:
That's interesting to know - I guess my brain was working 'overdrive' yesterday, and reading grammatical forms to the nth degree, hehe