Addendum: I forgot the near-universal mis-placement of the word “only.” For example, “I only ate one piece of toast” (really? what else could you have done with it?) instead of “I ate only one piece of toast.”
First, this one, which I heard on the news:
“The facts on the ground. . .”
Or anything on the ground, including references to troops as “boots on the ground.”
Really? Facts on the ground? Are some facts in the air, while others rest comfortably on Earth’s surface?
The phrase apparently originated as an Israeli diplomatic term denoting a real situation instead of an imaginary one (see Wikipedia), but even there it was ludicrous, for facts are facts and speculations are speculations. But the term has now been co-opted to cover many other things.
Oh, and here’s another: a glaring redundancy that that I often see in scientific review papers as a subtitle of the final section: “Future prospects.” This of course, is meant to distinguish the author’s predictions from those “past prospects.”
And this one will be banned on this website: “totes” for “totally”. I despise it because it’s meant to make the writer seem cool and with-it, like saying “peeps” for “people.” I wish Orwell were here to excoriate prose like that.
(Maybe I’m becoming one of those old guys who chases kids off his lawn.)
Feel free to comment below on the words or phrases that really annoy you. But don’t defend “totes” or “peeps”!
Also “special rights.” Aren’t those are just called “privileges?”
You won’t be thinking highly of “totes amazeballs, peeps!” then …
But isn’t ‘current prospects’ legit?
Is “legit” legit?
No, ” legit” is illegit.
Heh heh… I knew this would come up.. even thought about including a pre-emptive comment on this but refrained from doing so. 🙂
Two that infest internet (especially Yahoo) writing like cockroaches: “odd” for anything that isn’t white-bread middle of the road; “adorable” for anything with the galloping cutes, from widdow babies to (yes) puddy tats.
Also, “awesome.” Used to describe everything these days, from World War III to lunch.
What about ‘toadily awesome’?
LOL.. yeah!
There are so many. Coming to mind immediately is “going forward,” phony management-speak.
I like this new surge in the war against cliche, as Martin Amis has called it.
On second thought, it’s more than cliche, it’s language as deception, so perhaps Orwell is who I should be invoking.
Agree with “going forward” which I mentioned the other day. All uses are dreadful but perhaps this is an example of the worst. –
Divisional Sales Rep to Boss – “We need to discuss the downturn in the Eastern Division.”
Boss – “OK, we’ll talk about that going forward.”
Jesus, going forward over a cliff would be fine by me.
Going forward and reaching out…
Point accepted, but I must assume you think “going” means forward is all contexts. We often speak symbolically, so we use “going” in a directional sense, like some people use “going forward.” What do you use when the discussion refers to some retrograde thinking or action? If “going forward” is an error, then “going backward” would be too. Right? Rather than say “we are going backward on this project,” would you say “Our progress is retrograde?” How about “We’re backing up on this project.” How about common language expression….everybody knows what “going forward” and “going backward” means. I hope.
+1000
This.
That’s not me agreeing with you, it’s me saying I really don’t like it when people use “This” to say they agree with something.
word.
+ several – still chuckling…..
Bird is the word! 😉
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Hahaha I’m ok with that one 😉
Yes. I recently was admitted to the ‘board’ for my favorite soccer team, which happens to be based in London. I’m from Oklahoma. I thought, “finally, people who can discuss the state of affairs with insight and understanding.” No, I was wrong. Very little insight or understanding. A whole lot of “this”, though. It didn’t take long for me to get tired of it. The worst, the absolute worst, is the use of the ‘c’ word over there. It is in every single thread and nearly in every comment. I believe it’s obvious to which word I refer. I don’t care how it may be perceived in England, I still am unable to condone its use, at all.
Is it “colonial”?
“True facts”
It is either factual, or false. Being true is prerequisite to being defined as factual.
…and the common recursive slip of the tongue- ‘ATM machine’, or ‘am in the morning’, and my personal favourite ‘PIN number’.
Ah, you beat me to those!
“am in the morning” — that ruins “Moonlight Shadow” for me.
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Factuality is not contingent on truth. The statement, “I make a million dollars a year”, is a factual claim. It’s not a true factual claim, but it’s not a statement of opinion.
What do you mean it’s not true? If you, in fact, make a million dollars then it is true. And it is a fact. In fact.
“True facts” is always redundant.
+1
When I see “true facts” or “totes”, they are most often being used in a spirit of mockery. I see both of those on this very blite not infrequently. I have no problem with this usage.
Oops, shoulda put my +1 here. Plus another one, then.
I’ll tolerate solecisms or cliches when they’re being used, as you say, in mockery.
A bit closer to home (for a sciencey site): “PCR reactions”. Makes me cringe every time, but particularly when written.
I hate both 12.00 am and 12.00 pm, which are meaningless. 12 noon or 12 midnight! The meridian (midday) cannot be ante or post
Oh, yes, agreed.
Arguably, 12 am and 12 pm are both midnight, as it is before and after noon!
Poor IT implementations are behind this change, I’m afraid.
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“Noon” or “midnight” is sufficient. If you >really want to be picky, the “12:00” is redundant.
Agreed.
Agreed! This may be a bit tangential, but it is something that is very common among younger folks – “me and him….” – rampant misuse of me for I. And I just received this one – “mine and Shelby’s paper.” Egad.
Surely “me and him” is an English use of disjunctive pronouns. Consider the perfectly correct French usage “moi et lui” and the thousand year cross-fertilisation between the two tongues.
“me and him” is correct in some constructions. “The horse belongs to me and him” would be correct; “the horse belongs to him and I” would be incorrect.
How about ‘me and him went dahn the shops’?
Perfectly normal usage in certain dialects. And what is a language but a dialect with an army and a navy?
“Missing Link”
“God Particle”
“Theory” used when “hypothesis” would be better.
“Proof” used to describe scientific evidence.
This.
Word.
+ a gazillion.
Too right.
Bang on.
I’d like to ban “at the end of the day…” Also “doubling down.”
And it’d be awesome if I heard/read “awesome” a little less often.
“Doubling down” REALLY annoys me!
“Awesome” is an Americanism. It’s rarely used in other parts of the English speaking world.
Must say, “awesome” seemed (personal observation) to originate here on the West Coast (California) as a spoken equivalent to the British “brilliant”. It used to be delivered after a silent beat, but even in the beginning, it was delivered in low-value conversation:
“And, where are you from?”
“Berkeley.”
(beat) “Awesome!”
Thank ceiling cat, that “sea change” has passed on (except for an internet company “C-Change”)… which reminds me,
“..entered into rest”
as well as “entered into eternal rest” (anyone for ‘temporary rest’??)
…is still alive and well on the obituary page. Zounds!
“died”..he died! We all do it eventually, so..
“cut to the chase!” “What’s the bottom line?”
Awesome evolved to fill the entymological niche vacated by the semantic shift of awful.
Entomological.
FTFY
Etymological??
Now we have it right.
Ent = ant is how I remember.
Ent = tree herder
Old linguistics department joke:
Q: What’s the difference between an entomologist and and etymologist?
A: An entomologist studies insects. An etymologist is someone who can tell you the difference between an entomologist and and etymologist.
They use “awesome” a lot here in New Zealand.
I don’t mind a lot of these popularisms, but I hate words with their meanings stretched past breaking point.
“Massive” for low mass things like fires, storms, and explosions.
And we were taught to avoid euphemisms like the pestilence when I was a journalist, especially “passed away” etc for “died”. Now the ghastly “passed” seems to be standard US usage.
Fires, storms and explosions can be appropriately described in terms of their equivalent mass of fuel (or TNT), so I don’t see this as wrong.
The first time I heard “[s]he passed” (in this sense) I misunderstood it as a euphemism for “[s]he passed wind” … which was kind of embarrassing.
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‘At the end of the day’ has gotten overused, no doubt. My boss uses it all the time. She also uses ‘low hanging fruit’ quite often.
I first time I heard“at the end of the day” was around 1980. The reason I remember it was 1980 is because I had moved from the USA to Europe that year, and I didn’t understand was the phrase meant. I heard it only from British students. I think the phrase begun to appear in the USA during the first half of the 1990s.
Oh my, I’ll try again without typos…
The first time I heard “at the end of the day” was around 1980. The reason I remember it was 1980 is because I moved from the USA to Europe that year, and I didn’t understand what the phrase meant. I heard it only from British students. I think the phrase began to appear in the USA during the first half of the 1990s.
I have a tote bag that would be good for carrying peeps in! Although, given that they are the absolute nadir of marshmallow confections, carrying peeps is not something I want to do. I guess I’ll just use the bag to tote stuff home from the store.
One linguistic quirk that I cannot abide is the use of “pleaded” instead of “pled”. A perfectly good irregular verb thoughtlessly cast aside! Also, “decimate” means one in ten, not ‘everybody died’.
Irregular verbs appear to be no longer taught. Recently, I have heard uttered by clients –
Buyed for bought.
Hurted for past of hurt.
Seed for saw.
The world gets worse.
Verb conjugation as a whole seems to be missing.
I hear people saying things like “that needs fixed” as opposed to “that needs fixing” or “that needs to be fixed.”
Hey! That is a perfectly good example of Pittsburghese! Yinz need to know that the verb form “to be” is unknown in Pittsburgh.
This is partly a dialectal thing. You can hear “that needs fixed” (or more likely “that needs sorted”) in Scotland.
The world gets wurst? 🙂
It’s a sausage machine!
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Like “burned” for “burnt”
or “dreamed” for “dreamt”
“What is best in life? To crush irregular past tenses, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their past participles”
Crom!
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Historically, the number of irregular verbs decreases in time. In Indo-European languages, the trend is toward simplification. Only Lithuanian retains all eight of the original (posited) IE cases while English has eliminated all but three. I remember hearing, at a forum on historical linguistics, that it’s possible that at one time all – or almost all – verbs were irregular.
I think “pleaded” is generally preferred to “pled,” and is far more common. Also, “decimate” has been used for several centuries to mean “reduce by a bunch” and this usage is accepted in almost every dictionary. Its historical meaning of “reduce by a tenth” is far less common.
I feel that “pleaded” has become acceptable in a sentence such as “I pleaded with him to do X”, but is still not appropriate in a legal context. Ny hackles always rise when I see “He pleaded guilty” in a news item.
Ny instead of My is a personal pet peeve of mine. I hear this used on a daily basis.
; )
I’m quite happy with a “reduce by a bunch” meaning for “decimate” – the opportunities to use it in its original meaning are pretty limited. But I have often (probably more often) seen it used with the intended meaning “destroy almost completely”, which is just wrong.
Agreed. I suspect many users, having a vague idea that ‘deci’ means ten, think it means ‘reduce to a tenth of the original’. Which is way off the original meaning of reduce by a tenth, of course.
He goes to far. Marshmallow Peeps are sacred among my people.
He goes too far 😉
Peeps are my favorite of all confections. Especially when you slice open the box and let them get stale for a few days, so they’re crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside (much like an igloo to a polar bear).
OMG! If I end up with Peeps in my Zombie Jesus day basket, I’ll trade you for some Reese’s peanut butter eggs. To each his or her own , but peeps are perhaps my least favorite confection of all time. Sugar covered sugar + gelatin (it’s made from hooves you know).
Baby Daddy. Whats so friggin hard about saying Father or Dad? Baby Bump is another one.
I absolutely hate “prolly” being used instead of “probably.”
It’s not even just people being sloppy in speech, I’ve been seeing it in print. It bugs me, as you lose all association with the root word “probable” from which it derives its meaning.
The exception to that, though, is the late Donald Westlake’s character John Dortmunder.
“Prolly” was completely in character for him.
L
You really sshouldnt be chasing kids off their lawns.
Oy vey, I wrote ambiguously. I’ve tried to fixe it but it’s still unsatisfactory because I’m not sure the verb should be singular or plural.
Could you at least get the period inside the parentheses where it belongs?
(Oh, Jerry makes that mistake all the time. Shh!)
That is not a mistake. It is proper English to put the period outside the parentheses, just as it is to put it outside the quotation marks.
I must strenuously disagree. When what’s inside the parentheses is a complete sentence, its punctuation goes inside with it:
A sentence (with a clause).
A sentence. (Another sentence.)
I grant there may be a usage manual somewhere that supports your position over mine. But it does so in defiance of logic and common sense.
Concur, re parens.
With quotation marks, that is more a difference of house style; but in computing contexts, it is dangerous to use punctuation within the quotation marks; e.g.:
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And proofreaders and designers agree that period inside the quotes make text more readable.
J reminds me of another example – saying “no problem” rather than “you are welcome” in response to “thank you”.
Non-english speakers have readily adopted “No problem”, a distance back in the adopted pack from “OK”.
The hard “k” sound is seemingly universal to all languages. I have mused that, in a future world, all personalities that are non-human, should have a name beginning with a hard “k” sound (e.g., Connie, Clarence, Cooper, Keith, Ken, Karl, Keiichi, Kwon) to distinguish humans from non-humans.
All the Chinese students we get in the lab have names beginning with Q, Y or Z.
The letters used to spell their names have an arbitrary connection to the sounds they represent. I used this example with some of my students once to explain the arbitrariness of alphabets: I wrote a ‘P’ on the board and asked what it was. When I got the inevitable answer, I said, “Not if you live in Moscow.”
How would you handle Corporations. They’re people, too.
That claim is really objectionable.
I was guilty of that for quite a while until someone pointed out the near absence of the use of ‘you’re welcome’ in response to ‘thank you’. I have since attempted to use ‘you’re welcome’ every time I’m thanked. Hopefully that will spread through my family and friends and on from there.
I have no problem with “no problem”.
To this old fart, when a wait person delivers my drink and I say “thank you”, “no problem” seems inappropriate. When folks are doing what they are paid or expected to do, a problem should not be a part of the scenario.
I think it’s a matter of knowing your audience. If a young person thanks me, I say “no problem”. If an old fart thanks me, “you’re welcome” seems more appropriate. (And I’m an old fart myself.)
But since you mention it, add “wait person” to my peeve list. As far as I’m concerned, “waiter” is as genderless as “dancer”, “banker”, “teacher”, etc. By all means let’s abandon “waitress”, but “waiter” remains perfectly serviceable (so to speak).
Agreed on the wait person 🙂
Isn’t ‘wait person’ being awfully speciesist? Shouldn’t it be ‘wait creature’? Just because we’re not being waited on by trained octopuses (for example), doesn’t mean we should discriminate against the mere possibility of other species advancing themselves.
Or maybe ‘wait entity’ to allow for the possibility of androids…
But what about actor/actress? I’ve begun hearing the former used generically and I guess I get the usage, but I still find it a bit discordant when applied to female thespians.
Too many. Maybe redundancies are the most annoying: “ATM machine”, “PIN number”.
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Technically known as RAS syndrome (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome). 😉
redundant but not acronyms: Queso Cheese on restaurant menus. Chai tea in cafes.
… especially when what they really mean is masala chai. I blame Starbucks.
I will have my roast beef with au ju sauce.
I like mine with salsa sauce.
“Quantum leap”.
+h/2π
I cringe when I read a sentence or phrase that uses the reflexive pronoun myself incorrectly, for example, “If you have questions, you may email my assistant or myself.” What’s wrong with the shorter, correct and less pretentious word “me”?
This! (Sorry, J.)
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I suspect that you are, in fact, not sorry at all 😉
For more on deception in language take a look at Thomas Frank’s fun essay called “Broken Chair” in the April 2013 issue of Harper’s.
f-bomb. I hate that coy, sickly little euphemism. If you’re going to say f-bomb just say fuck and get it over with..
The Cyanide & Happiness webcomic used that as a comic device one time 😛
I couldn’t agree more. It’s not actually a euphemism, either. f-word is the euphemism, ‘f-bomb’ loudly draws attention to the fact that, shock horror, somebody just said fuck and we’re not going to let their naughtiness pass unnoticed.
It is interesting to note that the expression “It is interesting to note” is always either false or redundant.
“Whatever.”
I hate it.
Whatever….
Les
I actually like “whatever” as a way to express ultimate disinterest. It is much better than “Who cares?”
Or should I have said “ultimate indifference?”
Or ‘ultimate uninterest’? (Think I’m wrong there—“uninterest” may not even be an official word—but it’s a curious parallel to ‘uninterested’ versus ‘disinterested’ which had not occurred to me before.)
This post made me laugh. Thank you.
How about all new? What is the difference between a television program which is all new and one which is only new?
I also don’t like viable alternative. To me it seems that if something is an alternative, it must be viable. It just may not be a good alternative which is what I think people mean when they add viable.
George
That reminds me: ‘pre-recorded.’
“Recorded in front of a live audience”. As if any one would film in a crowded morgue.
I definitely prefer video to be recorded in front of a live audience rather than in back of a live audience.
ok, that was good.
Well now you’ve reminded me, why “in back of”? What is wrong with “behind”?
A USian dialect thing.
Maybe, euphemistically to avoid saying ‘behind’?
What is that, lurking behind my behind? Oops, …in back of my butt?
Nothing wrong with “behind”, nor with “in back of” either.
In this case, I chose “in back of” for symmetry with “in front of”. If Allen had said “before a live audience” then I would have said “behind”.
Euphony matters.
There’s also the matter of avoiding repetition. It’s not good form to repeat words too often (particularly in the same sentence), so of “behind” has already appeared in a sentence or paragraph and the idea needs to be revisited, “in back of” is a way of achieving variety and eschewing monotony.
The all new programme is the one with new innovations.
🙂
‘Clinical’. It means possibly medical related but adds little to a sentence.
“very unique” or any other qualified use of an absolute. It’s functionally the same as being “slightly pregnant”. Makes me want to scream!
Also using “data” as a singular when the word “datum” has always been there and hasn’t been hiding.
I also hate people saying “disinterested” when they mean “uninterested” – I hate the fact that I have to explain the difference even more! Does nobody teach English nowadays?
Agree with comments above on awesome – which has changed it’s original meaning quite considerably, from a sense of inspiring fear. And also on doubling down.
I’m probably just a grumpy old word nazi who is blinded to his own errors!
“Pre-plan,” “my bad,” “utilize” (in place of “use”), “individual” (in place of “person”), and the use of “myself” as anything other than a reflexive pronoun.
“utilize, authorize, harmonize” and all other American English of that nature. I don’t so much mind other variations.
The problem with “utilize” is that its misuse is pretentious. “Utilize” carries a precise connotation: “to make use of.”
In “Getting the Words Right” (Writer’s Digest Books, 1983), T.A.R. Cheney has this to say:
“When you utilize something, you make do with something not normally used for the purpose, e.g., you utilize a dime when the bloody screwdriver is nowhere to be found. If the screwdriver were there, you’d use it, not utilize a stupid dime for the purpose. Use use when you mean use, and utilize only when it’s properly used to mean–to use something not normally used. The computer went off-line, so they utilized Mr. Wang’s abacus, the one he liked to use.”
That’s not the only proper use of “utilize”. It can also refer to effective resource management: “The quarterback utilized his receivers well.” “The software utilizes memory efficiently.”
“the use of “myself” as anything other than a reflexive pronoun.”
I may be guilty of that myself, but then again, it’s perfectly correct grammar.
I am guilty of many of these word crimes. Not singling out your post specifically, rather I’m referring to the entire thread. Not all of us are exposed to academic level grammar on a regular basis. Perhaps that’s no excuse for horrible grammar, yet I would be happy if some lay person actually attempted to use “datum”. Would be more promising than “American Idol”.
“Not all of us are exposed to academic level grammar on a regular basis.”
Good. It is obvious that you have said what you wished to say. My bugbear, and this is worse than just annoying, it’s terrible logic, is those many people who would have stupidly said:
‘All of us are not exposed to academic level grammar on a regular basis.’
but meant what you had said correctly.
That kind of sloppiness leads to sloppy thinking!
The word “data” is a singular mass noun in English, like “information” or “water”. The phrase “the data are” sounds exactly as wrong as “the water are” or “the information are” to the vast majority of English speakers.
Everyone treating it as plural does so inconsistently – a whole lot of “data are” and “these data”, then in the next sentence, “how much data” instead of “how many data”. And they never use “datum” – it’s always “bit of data”, “piece of data”, “data point”, etc. It’s blatantly obvious that treating it as a plural word takes conscious effort, and the overall effect is to seem very pretentious.
As for “disinterested” vs “uninterested”, I tend to agree, except the facts are not on our side. The former originally meant “not interested”. We can only hope most people choose to maintain the distinction, since we really don’t have another single word to denote not having a personal stake.
Correct re “disinterested”.
But… what’s wrong with “impartial” as an unambiguous alternative?
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PS. Oh, and “alternate” when “alternative” is meant.
I don’t think impartial cuts it. You can be interested but still impartial (though sometimes only at effort). Being disinterested means you don’t have a reason to be partial, so impartiality can be reasonably assumed.
Of course these are subtleties that I can’t be sure most people even agree with me on.
Was also stickler until I listened to this: grammarunderground.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/0109-Disinterested-vs-Uninterested.mp3
segue
climate change
the full spectrum of …
to dialogue
climate change is far less annoying than ‘global warming’
Exactly the opposite, in my opinion, which is why I listed that one.
“My bad”
As in, “Oh! Sorry for knocking you over mister — my bad.”
Uggh…I hate this one – I was so confused when it started circulating. What the hell is “my bad”???
“I could care less” when the person saying this means the exact opposite.
The trouble is, in America at least, “I could care less” and “I couldn’t care less” have come to mean the same thing. Ostensibly sarcastic, “I could care less” is taken to mean the opposite of what it says–like “Tell me about it,” which means “Don’t tell me about it [because I already know].” In other words, it’s an idiom, like “near miss.”
As Michael Quinion says in World Wide Words, “There’s a close link between the stress pattern of ‘I could care less’ and the kind that appears in certain sarcastic or self-deprecatory phrases that are associated with the Yiddish heritage and (especially) New York Jewish speech. Perhaps the best known is ‘I should be so lucky!’ in which the real sense is often “’I have no hope of being so lucky,’ a closely similar stress pattern with the same sarcastic inversion of meaning.”
I disagree. When people say “Tell me about it,” they generally understand that they are using a sardonic or sarcastic figure of speech, whereas when most people say “I could care less,” they really seem to think they are saying something that means “I couldn’t care less.” Also, the “I should be so lucky,” seems to have more in common with the phrase, “He should live and be well.”
Sure, when people say “I could care less” what they mean is “I couldn’t care less,” and here in the US they are never misunderstood. That’s what makes the expression idiomatic. Idioms (like “near miss”) are inherently illogical.
As John McIntyre writes in the Baltimore Sun, “Idioms, in any language, convey meanings that cannot be determined from the literal sense of the words. So you can object to an idiom and shun it because you find it trite or common or inappropriate for the tone or subject or audience. But you don’t get to kvetch about it for being illogical.”
See also Jan Freeman on this one in the Globe:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/24/i_could_care_less/?page=1
Actually, the first time I saw this phrase misused was in a Hemingway novel. I can’t remember which novel it was but if Hemingway was writing “I could care less” way back in the 20s, then that sets a pretty strong example. We should remember that one of the best ways to determine English usage is by noticing how our greatest writers have used the language.
Oh right, I forgot ‘oxymoron’
“Gotten’ – there’s always a better word.
Sometimes written but mostly heard – “There’s two” …. (or ‘three’, or ‘many’, or ‘lots’ – you get the picture). No there bloody isn’t – There’s only one.
“Bring” used for “take”. I know it’s an ex-pat thing, but it still bugs me 42 years after hearing the radio announcer on my first morning in Canada telling that rain was in the forecast and I should bring my umbrella with me. I had no idea we were all expected at the studio that morning. Unfortunately I was unable to go – I had a home to find, and a car to buy. I hope I wasn’t missed.
My sister says, “tooken”. I kid you not. She’s 33.
Visit and interview are similarly used in the Americas: people are said to visit (or visit with) when they host vistors; people interview for a job when they are the interviewed candidate. In the UK and most commonwealth countries it seems only the visitor visits and the candidate doesn’t interview. I don’t think it wrong so much as confusing.
But “visit” and “visit with” are not the same thing. “Visit with” is more like “chat amiably”, whereas “visit” may mean “pay a visit to”. This distinction is not made in British speech.
In Britsh English ‘visit with’ is rarely used, it would mean I took someone else along with me on the visit.
e.g. ‘I visited George’s family’ [or maybe, ‘George’s family visited me’] – never ‘with’.
But, ‘I visited the Science Museum with George and his family’.
“Chuffed” and “woo”
“chuffed” blows, but “woo”s alright.
Agreed, but “alright” isn’t all right.
Pedant.
Agreed. “Woo” is necessary. The word, not the woo itself.
My bad!
Sorry, just seen aldoleopold’s post above.
It bears repeating…or, rather, never repeating ever again, anywhere, by anyone.
LOL
I don’t much like “peeps” either. But it’s British slang. There’s probably a lot of American slang that the Brits don’t much like.
I was brought up on Aussie slang. Fair dinkum.
No worries mate, she’ll be right. 🙂
Stone the crows mate!
Is it true that Aussies have a penchant for abbreviating as many words as they can? Such as ‘aggro’ for ‘aggressive’, ‘avro’ for afternoon’, ‘compo’ for ‘compensation’?
Dinks, mate.
My brother came up with ‘bravo’, for breakfast taken in the afternoon.
“Can I lend some money” when the person wants to “borrow” money.
Mixing up “itching” and “scratching”.
Would you “loan” me some money? I hate it, even though it’s correct.
“Loan me some money” isn’t correct. “Lend me some money” is.
That’s what I thought but I looked it up.
Are you having a lend? Wotcher lookitupin?
dick shun airy?
I really can’t stand itching instead of scratching.
Me either, which is why I always scratch when I itch.
A comely young girl from Natchez
Wore clothes that were covered in patchez.
When told this was so,
She said, “Yes, Ah know,
But wherever ah itchez ah scratchez.”
Ha! Very good.
Well, ‘blog’ doesn’t bother me and Jerry hates it, but then Jerry also uses ‘crib’ for his house and I hate that! Whatevs, laterz peeps(runs away)
He also uses a bunch of other deliberately ungrammatical terms, like “moar”. Which makes this website entry rather ironic (I share his dislike of the term “blog”).
Well, “moar” isn’t ungrammatical. It’s just a purposeful misspelling (yet whose purpose is lost on me).
It’s from the LOLcats, where any alternative (and incorrect) spelling of a word is preferred.
As for the rest, I consider spelling a subset of written grammar, though it’s certainly possible to argue against that view.
Confession time – I am a gamer (mmo’s) and may or may not have occasionally used: pwn, l33t, epic, nerdrage, carebear, ftw, and Leroy Jenkins.
+1 Leroy Jenkins, ftw!
Heh! MMO’s are killing fields rampant with language abuse. Yet, I will always be partial to “nerdrage” as I have witnessed this phenomenon on several (many?) occasions.
Like!
“Proactive”
Acronym redundancies: PIN number, ATM machine, RAM memory, CD disk. Also, using “there” when you mean “their” or “they’re”, and “your” when you mean “you’re”.
aka pleonasms.
Or “disk” instead of “disc”.
The proper use of “disk” is shorthand for “diskette”, as in “floppy diskette”. A CD is a compact disc. I’d say it should be “hard disc” as well, but it should really be “hard drive”.
Disk can also refer to things like the galactic disk and an intervertebral disk.
You appear to have it backwards: http://grammarist.com/spelling/disc-disk/
“Disk is indisputably the correct spelling for computer storage drives” and “And disc is preferred for music records, albums, and machine parts”
I really don’t. The term “disk” is indisputably a shortening of “diskette”, which is itself an informal term for a floppy disc.
I dispute it.
I have in my hand a copy of Fred Hoyle’s Astronomy and Cosmosmology, printed in 1975, in which he talks about “the galactic disk”.
I also have here a 1966 edition of The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology and a 1970 Random House American College Dictionary, both of which include “disk” but not “diskette”.
According to Wikipedia, “diskette” was introduced in 1973 by IBM.
So it simply cannot be true that “disk” arose as a shortening of “diskette”, since “disk” was already in widespread use as a variant of “disc” well before the invention of diskettes.
“Cosmosmology”? Urk.
Italic fail as well. My bad.
The Historical Thesaurus of the OED records “disc”/“disk” (without differentiating spellings) since C18 (also “disk” but not “disc” for a shield); for “secondary storage”, since 1947. “Diskette” dates from 1973 (agreeing with Wikipedia!).
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Still backwards. According to this: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ette, “-ette” is added to a noun to mean “a smaller version of something”, so disk came first, then diskette to mean a smaller disk. The fact that it is diskette rather than discette, means that disk is the proper basis.
“…but it should really be ‘hard drive’.”
Why? Is the drive mechanism any more hardened than floppy or optical drives? No, it isn’t. It’s the platter — the “disk” — that’s hard (relative to other types of disk).
“Hard drive” is just a contraction of “hard disk drive”.
Yes to all, but the spelling is still supposed to be “disc”, for the reasons specified above. I’m merely stating my preference for the shorthand “hard drive”.
That’s how we techies refer to it.
Believe the basic difference is or was UK (disc, L. discus) vs US. Also, bc68251 below has it right re computer storage; couldn’t find any references that say why it matters.
Better make that bc68251 above.
thank you
I remember one of the first papers my colleagues got accepted to the British Int J STD & AIDS (we are sex researchers), in the late 80’s… “floppy” was used only for the disks that were really floppy, i.e. the 5.25″ ones.
The secretary, over the phone, asked us if we could put the paper on a stiffy. We of course told her we were well acquainted with putting things on stiffies, and were looking forward to the day when our hard copies of the Journal came in the mail.
intelligent design
creation science
Michele Bachmann
That made me laugh out loud, and I won’t
say “lol” because that’s one that bugs
me!
hahahahaha? 😉
Yes, it’s nice when they can be listed in a tightly related group like that too! I have to say, though, that hearing her speak in that whiny voice is even more annoying than the name.
“Different than” always jars when I hear it. I’m afraid that train has left the station, though. (That phrase is annoying, too.)
Perhaps it may help you to know that “different from” sounds just as jarring to people who use “different than”.
The problem here is that “than” is a conjunction used in comparisons, but “different” introduces a contrast, not a comparison, and so it properly takes the preposition “from”–except in those few instances where the full construction may seem awkward.
“Different than” is rarely preferred. As Cecil Adams writes, “A sensible discussion of ‘different from’ versus ‘different than’ may be found in Theodore M. Bernstein’s ‘The Careful Writer,’ published in 1965. Bernstein favors the former usage in most instances. So does the usage panel in my 1976 ‘American Heritage Dictionary.’ The argument has nothing to do with Latin. People say ‘different than’ out of the mistaken belief that ‘different’ is a comparative adjective and thus takes ‘than,’ as with ‘better than,’ f’aster than,’ etc. But it’s not a comparative (diff, differ, diffest?), it just looks like one. ‘Different’ is used to draw a distinction and thus properly takes ‘from,’ as do ‘separate from,’ ‘distinct from,’ ‘apart from,’ etc. (One recognizes that we say in contrast to; one also concedes that another false comparative, other than, is firmly entrenched in the language. Never mind, this is English. One does the best one can.)
+ many
Your last parenthetical is the only relevant part. This is English, where usage determines what’s correct. And if you come from certain areas, “different than” is correct.
It’s not “usage” that determines what’s correct, but context. Usage, in fact, prefers “from.” By this criterion “than,” alas, is only rarely rarely acceptable. “Different from” is the standard, no question.
+1
I hate ‘different than’ too. As you say, it’s not a comparative.
Another wrong’un that crops up is ‘different to’, though it’s not quite as wrong as ‘different than’ (if there can be degrees of wrongness).
different than vs different from isn’t nearly as annoying as differently abled instead of disabled.
Oh yes, that’s wrong in two ways. First, there’s no verb ‘to able’; and second, it implies that the subject has some ability the rest of us don’t, which is so patently incorrect it’s almost an insult to the listener’s intelligence.
Jerry, you live in a high-rise.
You don’t HAVE a lawn. L
“technology has moved on” . No it hasn’t, it sat there sulking until an engineer got involved. Its a human activity.
What would Orwell think about “kthxbai”? 🙂
Well, I am afraid I have to violate your request not to defend Peeps, especially given the proximity to Easter. They are just sweet innocent little things.
after dropping a peep in the sandbox as a small child and attempting to eat it anyway, I can tell you that they are NOt so sweet and innocent!
They come in creamy and crunchy when you’re a kid, like peanut butter.
A couple more all time faves:
faves
Christian love
family values
Using couple for more than two… (Sorry Dave).
Should of, would of, could of is becoming increasingly seen in writing.
“My brother and I’s test results came back.”
All cringeworthy for me.
No problem – realized it just as I was hitting ‘submit.’
when people say “a couple”, I usually ask, “do you mean a regular couple or a Mormon couple?”
“It is what it is” no shit. if it wasn’t what it is, then it would be something else!
my ex-girlfriend used to say this to me any time I complained or commented on something. I’m pretty sure this was key in why we broke up, either that, or her hiding money in a secret account and buying a house behind my back…
I also despise the term “Intellectually disabled” in place of developmentally disabled, physically disabled, and mentally disabled. I spent 5 years as a paraprofessional in special education and I still work with young adults with various disabilities. There are some terms that offensive, and there are ways to make usually inoffensive terms sound offensive, but please, George W. Bush and NASCAR fans are “intellectually disabled” but they aren’t otherwise physically or mentally disabled! (well, they might be but that’s another issue altogether)
Yeah, “intellectually disabled” sounds like an intentional insult.
‘differently abled’ ?
handicapable!
This is probably provocative. There is no single word to refer to persons of both sexes. I wish there were such a word (Heshe?) However in its absence authors (particularly of academic books and articles) appear to use “she” in place of “he or she”. British authors, on the other hand, tend to use “he”, although the preface will often point out that “he” is used for “he and she”.
I may say that I find this type of affirmative action slightly condescending.
Jerry, has this become a standard which US academics feel obliged to adhere to?
Willard Espy proposed a unisex pronoun for English that was a contraction of the phrase “he or she or it” and it is spelled “h’orsh’it”.
I lament the loss of the English dual pronouns which did not survive into Middle English.
There’s nothing wrong with singular “they”. It has a long pedigree. (Although “themself” still kinda jars.)
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I’ve come around to liking the singular “they.” It used to bother me as being wrong (and violating everything I learned in school,) but the need for a pronoun that isn’t gender specific won me over.
I’ve seen some attempts by others to use pronouns like “ze” and “zir,” but those just don’t sit well with me and sound forced, as opposed to “they.”
The situation is even more complicated in languages like Hindi. The third person singular pronoun is gender neutral, but in most tenses, verbs conjugate for gender. So “He is running” and “She is running” will translate to different sentences in Hindi, but the difference would be in the part corresponding to “is running”.
Curiously, this is not the case for most other Indian languages (except Urdu), including Sanskrit: most of them have gendered pronouns, and verbs don’t conjugate for gender. A notable exception is Bengali whose grammar is completely gender neutral: pronouns are not gendered, and neither are verbs conjugated for gender. “He is running” and “She is running” will map to the same sentence in Bengali.
Richard Dawkins, for one, uses ‘she’ on occasion – and you’re right, I find it disconcerting. I think I prefer the singular ‘they’ (as Vin noted) – it may be grammatically incorrect but it’s less distracting.
Unless, of course, it’s used deliberately – “What’s the worst thing you can tell a Klansman about God?” “She’s black”.
“it may be grammatically incorrect”
Really, it’s not.
(Unfortunately, my editors disagree.)
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I long ago picked up the habit of using “s/he” from a college professor.
“S/he” can annoy True Believers, who might grudgingly acknowledge god’s “female” side, can’t bear to see it get top billing.
Having flown into an LZ in a Huey, “boots on the ground” makes perfectly good sense, though if not used militarily, it loses its true meaning.
From a civilian perspective, “boots on the ground” is annoying because it seems to trivialize or dehumanize the real immediate danger and sacrifice our troops are subjected to. A similar usage that bugs me is when employees are called “resources” or “assets” or “bodies in chairs” or any similar distancing metaphor. It depersonalizes them, and it may be easier for politicians and voters to send troops into danger if there are only “boots on the ground” rather than “our sons, daughters, husbands, and wives”.
I won’t defend the indefensible “totes” or “peeps”, which aren’t even English and only seem contextually appropriate when accompanied by the sound of smacking crackling chewing gum while focusing at least half your attention on replenishing your cherry flavored lip gloss.
But “facts on the ground” makes more sense to me. I think it can be annoying because it resonates with the annoyingly superficial “boots on the ground”. But to me “facts on the ground” expresses something similar to “de facto” or “how things look in the immediate context under consideration”. In an age where we have near instantaneous global communications, the phrase has more sensible applications. It perhaps sounds less pretentious than “in situ”.
This phrase is often used in reference to the Israeli construction of settlements in the West Bank, which is “establishing facts on the ground” that make arriving at a two-state peace accord more and more difficult as time goes on. The settlements are brute facts, very much on the ground there in Judea and Samaria, and calling them “facts on the ground” gives them the force of reality in some way that considering settlements as an abstract idea does not.
There is the other contrast between “facts on the ground” and “abstract facts” such as legal rights. So not so much “facts in the air”, as facts “up in the air”.
irregardless instead of regardless. Really irks me
________________________________
The list has the potential to be long and tedious.
“At the end of the day.”
“Past history” (Future history only exists in science fiction; history of the present is “current events”).
Using the word “optics” for “appearance” (a fairly new one – “Romney’s campaign suffered from bad optics”).
“Reason why” – this is one of my pet peeves. When “reason” is a noun, it should never be followed by “why”, as in “…the reason why I did that…” In fact, “reason why” should never be used unless one is quoting Tennyson.
Every spring, though, I buy a package of sacrificial Peeps® and torture them in a variety of sadistic ways. Those that remain edible after the process are devoured.
“Future history only exists in science fiction”
You forget that Jerry is a hard determinist!
(And I think you mean “exists only in science fiction”.)
Variations on a peeve:
• An event “changed history.”
• An event “changed history forever.”
• An event “would change history forever.”
All bad because of their concept of history.
For Gregory Kusinick:
• “only exists in science fiction”
• “exists only in science fiction”
How do they mean anything different?
Taken literally, “X only exists in Y” says that, in context Y, X merely exists and does nothing more. It does not say anything about X’s existence or behavior in other contexts.
In contrast, “X exists only in Y” says plainly that there’s no other context in which X exists, without limiting X’s role in Y to mere existence.
See my related comment about “said only” v. “only said”.
Adverbs can be moved around pretty freely for emphasis, as long as it doesn’t create ambiguity that a normal person would notice. I am only saying this once. 🙂
But it’s OK to create ambiguity that only language geeks would notice?
“The invention of time travel changed history forever.”
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This was one of the solecisms called out in the OP. Just sayin’.
Oh, & ‘just sayin”.
“I think we’re done here.” Used on all investigative-cop shows. “In point of fact.” “At this point in time.” Basically, anything phrase that has been over-extended beyond the word or few words necessary.
“Not to put too fine a point on it.”
1) “Panties”. No. Just…no.
2) When people misuse the phrase “begging the question”
No. I won’t say it.
Re: “panties”. I think “grundies” is a much
better term!
Skivvies, as my grandma used to say. but then she also called the scrotum a “bummy” ,hair in the shower drain “hinnie hair” and taking a dump was a “grunt”.
“…grundies. …now let’s move on to something ruder… ‘Wankel Rotary Engine'”
Worse, at Mazda HQ it’s a Wanker Rotary Engine.
How about “forces” instead of “troops”? A force is composed of more than one soldier, right?
Troops (soldiers too) should only be used for Army personnel, a sailor, Marine, airman is not a troop or a soldier. I wish the media would get that.
Boy Scouts also…
It’s short for “armed forces”, which covers all branches of the military. Nothing whatsoever wrong with using it to describe military personnel.
I’ve never heard “totes”. I kind of like “peeps” but shall not use it in posts to WEIT.
-Florian
Does your crib have a lawn ?
Calling a group of males and females, ”Guys”.
Every word Freddie Mercury ever sang.
A brilliant advert.
Marvel Comics.
This is an outstanding school.
The prophet Mohammed (pbuh) – in a flyer for Birmingham Symphony Hall.
Wrong. Totes wrong.
Freddie Mercury was a god among men, and every word he sang was true.
“Mercury was a god” … !
/@
That’s all I’m saying.
(Maybe I’m becoming one of those old guys who chases kids off his lawn).
Totes.
Oh, sweetie, you’re yelling at clouds.
If you’re not British, please, for the love of God, don’t use Britishisms.
“Spot on” should be taken out back and shot dead.
I am discovering things that are britishisms that I never knew existed – as a Brit in the US, only today when talking on the phone I said ‘hold on, I’ll pass you over’, when handing the phone to my partner, and was promptly laughed at by all present for such a ‘british’ expression. Not sure what I should have said instead.
“I’ll knock you up” is my favorite Britishism that means something completely different in the States.
And, rather surprisingly, ‘stiff upper lip’ is an American coining.
“Have you a rubber?”
A very large sign on the railway overpass above a major road in Manchester (UK) once read:
“You are safe with the Oxford Rubber Company.”
What’s a fanny-pack for?
That’s a favorite!!!!
or the Fanny Farmer cookbook…
Last I heard, Freddie Mac knocked up Fannie Mae.
“Passed on”, “passed over’, or “crossed over’ and other euphemisms for dying should be banned. I’ve hated “passed on” since the day my father died, and the hospital phoned my mother to say that he had “passed on”. My mother’s mother tongue is not English, and she thought they meant he had passed out in his hospital bed where he had been for days. So there we were…. still waiting for any news of his condition….
I hope you can appreciate the humor in retrospect.
A slightly different version happened to me. I got the phone call telling me that my father had died. After letting my mother, wife, and kids know, I left for the facility he had been living at. Halfway there my cell phone rang. They were calling to tell me they were wrong.
I’ve considered the possibility of starting a new religion.
Thanks for your story. I can’t imagine how you all felt! It’s true, I do find mine a little funny. 🙂
“Transition” is the latest euphemism for death I heard for the first time last year, as in “Sally transitioned last night and a memorial service is being planned for Saturday.”
I too heard this recently. It spazzed me out. 🙂
That’s your opinion. It’s just an interpretation. In terms of the situation on the ground going forward we categorically deny that we ourselves personally have an opinion in which you can hold us to. It’s all subjective and whether you literally believe it or not, the true facts of the matter are the subject of debate. Studies show that. It is what it is. Furthermore, it is important to note that you have a right to believe what you like. It’s word salad and I don’t suffer fools gladly.
Says who?
+1
the true facts of the matter
Which brings up my pet peeve. When someone says “the fact of the matter”
1) It implies that there is only one relevant fact
2) It implies that the sayer is in possession of that fact
3) In my experience, the phrase is followed more often by an opinion than a fact.
That’s YOUR opinion. It’s your democratic right. My truth is different to your truth. Your analysis focuses on the problem, not the cause. Don’t be so negative. Follow your dream.
“My truth is different to your truth.” Yeah; this usually means that the speaker/writer’s truth isn’t true…
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Too true.
Andrew,
I think your pastiche paragraph is simply a cut-and-paste job from ‘sleeprunning’ – remember him? Good one!
No, never heard of “sleeprunning”. Will look it up. It’s mostly cut-and-pasted from online discussions I’ve had, including here. I should work it up properly and design it to look like one of those inspirational things people share on Facebook.
Stop, Andrew! Sleeprunning was a commenter from about eighteen months ago, who had a peculiar habit of writing ‘we’ instead of ‘I’; and who got up the nose of lots of others on the site by asserting untrue propositions, irrespective of evidence or any visible expertise, littering his comments with grammatical inaccuracies, and generally being needlessly argumentative. I suspect Jerry ran out of patience with him as well.
Ah, okay, thanks. 🙂
But I have to confess to being very argumentative and up-orifice-getting myself, so don’t be surprised if I turn out to be merely a more concentrated reincarnation of the legendary Sleeprunning.
LOL! I mean ROFL… ROLFMAO.
“Literally” when applied to metaphor or hyperbole. As in, “… and when he showed her the photos, I literally died.” Or, “He literally hit that one out of the park.” Just bugs me.
Also, totes? Peeps? Srsly? I think those died when Friends went off the air.
The use of “literally” as an intensifier bothers a lot of people, but its non-literal sense has long been established in the language, dating back to the 1760s. There’s room for greater tolerance. See this good, comprehensive discussion by Stan Carey:
http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/literally-centuries-of-non-literal-literally/
I can no longer stand “slippery slope”. Completely meaningless and vacuous due to its over-use and usually the argument of choice for people who have no actual argument.
Amazeballs and tatas .
My personal un-favorite is “reason being,” followed closely by “second of all.” It should, properly, be “the reason *is*,” and if you’re second, you’re not “second of all,” you’re merely second. It’s a conflation with the phrase “first of all.”
Brenda Nelson
Skyeyes9@cox.net
I also hear ‘the reason being, is…’.
A friend of mine (originally from north London) used to drive me nuts with
‘the thing is, is that…‘
which seemed to be a fossilised stammer or tic, except that it was the standard grammar of his idiolect (occurring in different sentences according to the same pattern, etc). Then I came across the same pattern in various other speakers, implying that it exists as a distinct tradition in a real dialect; and though it still makes no sense and drives me nuts, I know it’s not just that my friend’s mentally defective…
“ultimate reality”
Whenever I see this phrase, it seems it should be replaced with “my fantasy, which I really, really REALLY want to be true”
1] Irony & sarcasm overused. Plain, succinct writing in posts/comments is the gold standard.
Example:- The current “…oh wait” infection grinds my teeth.
2] Affect/effect
“The ‘n’ word.”
And all word with asterisks substituting for letters.
Louis CK on ‘the N word’ NSFW
oh… NSFW.
“The British navy”
For word that are so overused as to be meaningless: how about “freedom” and “liberty” ?
Why do educated and reflective people use the word “dis(s)”?
Because it’s short and punchy, and everyone knows what it means.
I just don’t buy it. Since when did “short and punchy” matter so much? Why not reduce everything to this level?
Correct me if i’m wrong, but the word originated among those who are confident and proud of their lack of education. Given that there’s no sarcasm involved in the common usage of the term by very educated people, this suggests that the educated are suffering from a (cultural) inferiority complex.
There wasn’t another word in common usage that did the same job at all, let alone shortly and punchily. Compared to diss, all the phrases with related senses were already clichés, worn-out metaphors or euphemisms with no force or specificity.
Not surprising it spread far, but I’ve hardly ever used it myself (and then only ironically) because it functions almost exclusively in gossip.
Short and punchy in English has always mattered. Maybe you should take a look at a list of English words sorted by popularity. According to one list I just checked, out of the first two hundred most popular words, just four have more than two syllables, and 31 have two. The rest are a single syllable – short and punchy.
Ways of knowing.
I think there is a rule at NPR that they must use the work “evolved” in the non-biological sense at least once a day. As in “her artwork has evolved in the last decade”. I think it makes them feel cool to invoke evolution- even though they are, in doing so, letting us know they know nothing about biological evolution. That really annoys me!
The discussion above of pled vs pleaded reminds me of a pet hate: “lead” instead of “led” as the past of the verb “to lead”. At least we don’t get “leaded” (yet).
My car takes unleaded.
I abhor “last but not least”.
I have many biological ones, like hemipene (a singular construction from hemipenes), but I’ll restrict myself to two: “ecology” used instead of “environment” (“the oil spill damaged the ecology of the area”) and “taxon” used instead of “species” (stating the taxon’s rank is more informative).
Agree partly re ‘taxon’, though it’s a usefully general term when one is referring to a population whose ‘specieshood’ is in doubt (there being no single definition or criterion for what a species is), or more than one group of organisms – say, a set comprising a couple of subspecies, a whole other genus, and a whole other family that share some feature of interest (say, being aquatic, or blue, or whatever).
What annoys me more in biology papers is people using ‘comprise’ when they mean ‘compose’ (vice versa you don’t see so much).
It’s funny how the same tired phrases get used again and again and yet we’re all capable of using phrases never before used. According to theory anyway. We mostly don’t realise our potential.
Political terms such as “left”, “right” and “liberal” (certainly here in the UK) are, in themselves, meaningless. Each of these terms are often used to designate the most contradictory and antithetical viewpoints.
And “God-shaped hole” is a phrase that tells me nothing meaningful.
“Hard working families” is another piece of political humbug.
But, by far the two most dishonestly used words in the English language today are “respect” and “offensive”.
But, in the final analysis, my views are irrelevant and utterly inconsequential, because these words, used by the right people in the right circumstances, have tremendous concrete social/political power. And that, more than anything else is what matters, unfortunately.
what the hell is a “god-shaped hole”? I’ve never heard this before. but it reminds me of another irritating phrase, “On the whole”. It always sounds dirty to my warped mind.
Never heard… ?
I guess you don’t have many arguments with faith-heads then.
At the risk of repeating myself (a risk I take often here):
“God-shaped hole” is used to assert that that emptiness can be filled only by God. (Not that the religious have Sterling in mind, of course!)
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nope. still sounds dirty to me.
Show me a God-shaped hole in the ground, and let’s see what we can do about filling it.
I wish “that (being) said . . .” would hurry up and die
Yeah… translation: “let me butter you up, and then I’ll put the screws on you!”
OK I didn’t read all the other comments, but one that really hacks me off is when a young person says “Can I get” when they mean “May I have”. GRRR! And perhaps a kind USian can explain why “nuclear” seems to be universally pronounced as “nuklulah”?
Hey! Don’t get us all mixed up with our former president.
You mean ‘nukulah’, don’tcha?
Oh, I hate ‘you betcha’ ever since that woman, what’s her name, in Alaska?
I like “you betcha” because it reminds me of the hilarity of Tina Fey satirizing the infamous veep candidate.
I like ‘you betcha’ because it reminds me of my extremely Scandinavian childhood community in Seattle, where one of our high school cheers was:
Lutefisk lutefisk
lefse lefse
we’re from Ballard High School
Ya sure ya betcha!
Vogue expressions, like “Can I get a cappuccino?” usually achieve currency because of some quality of tone or attitude they seem to impart in a certain context. Here a sort of glib and casual hipness is conveyed–at least in the US.
Such a delightful deluge of complaints, with an occasional drip of erudite academese! And the smoking, flaming irony (as in Webster 3, on my iPad)!
I assume that most commenters here lean toward a full respect of biological evolution.
What we are witnessing with these new word meanings and regularizing of verbs is linguistic drift, language evolution. It doesn’t know where it’s going, but it is surely going to get there!
We’re right in the middle of it and only notice the annoying rust and apparent deterioration.
Perhaps we can get a flavor of what our genes must have tasted when those new, unwelcome alleles popped in.
Some change is maladaptive, of course!
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I haven’t been able to read every comment, but here are a few that send me over the edge:
“It is what it is.”
“Irregardless”
Misuse and/or misunderstanding of ‘meme’ which has been co-opted by the main stream.
“It is what is is”
is virtually the only phase that lets me relate to my daughter who had a second child [when I did not think this was a good idea].
When she is calling me, and she is suffering, that’s what I have: It is what is is.
I love this phrase. It’s about resignation and acceptance. Sometimes, it’s all there is.
Glad to hear you stand up for “It is what it is”, Marta. I find it a most useful construction, an utterance that cuts through or eliminates further debate, typically at a point when all useful avenues of discussion have been exhausted, or when sh!t just needs to get done. Unfortunately, it is perhaps too often used as a means of summary execution: If I say “It is what it is”, it’s often the case that others may not agree with my conclusion and object to the seemingly cavalier dismissal of further discussion of “what it is”. [To which the only proper reply is “It is what it is, now go pound sand”.]
An approximate analogue is ‘shit happens’. (Personally, I’m quite OK with that, though it does get over-used).
“This too shall pass”.
“sense of _____” as in “She felt a sense of wonder” or “She felt a sense of guilt” or you can fill in the blank with awe, curiosity, fear, contentment, or dozens of alternatives. All would be better if one wrote, “She felt wonder” or “She was curious”. Sometimes I find that same construction six or eight times in a single novel. I don’t know why authors feel the need to use the extra words. Tighten up the writing!
langniappe
giggle.. you bad…
Moot- It is interesting that when a word is transmuted, the “newer” meaning often resembles the original. In the case of “moot”, the meaning seems to have reversed. Moot (adj.) means worthy of debate. To moot (v.) is to debate. But “a moot point” to the unwashed masses now seems to mean irrelevant or redundant, in other words, not worthy of debate. How did that happen?
‘Mute point’ is a common malaprop variant, and may have something to do with the change in meaning.
…or the Zen reply ‘Mu’, neither yes nor no, that unasks the question…
This thread reminds me of the old joke about the employer who says to the new typist, “There are two words I deplore and do not want to hear. One is ‘lousy’ and the other is ‘swell’.” The new typist says, “Sure, OK, so what are they?”
All I can say at this point is :-
Paging Language log, paging language log. Langusge log to the Red phone please.
Language log is here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
Exactly my thoughts too. Get the experts here quickly!
Starting every response to a question with, “to be honest….”
I just cringe when I hear it, people say it way too often, especially Charles Barkley.
And I agree, “peeps” and “totes” are annoying as hell.
As a last vent, the headlines used for news articles like, “X slams Y”, “X dissed by Y”…
“safe haven” a very common redundancy
and, from a news report,
“We’ll start operationalising that decision this evening.”
Dear Professor Coyne,
You act as if language is somehow sacred. Yes… it is YOUR blog and you have the right (and power) to maintain any stance you wish, but if you (rightly) put forth the message of evolution and then revert to an argument from authority on your disdain of language “evolution” (totes, peeps) you diminish your position… you just become a “silly old fart.” Shame 🙂
Dear Mr. Bruce (Toronto)
1. This is not a blog
2. You come off as a really pompous git. Do you realize that this was a lighthearted post, and you get all haughty and stuff.
3. Calling the host names is not permitted.
I would suggest that you find another website on which to parade your pomposity.
Oh, and you’re rude to, especially for a first-time poster
“to” when “too” is meant…
(*beat* I’ll get my coat.)
/@
Have a drink.
Have two.
I recommend Martinis. You go about them thus:
Dry vermouth. A teaspoon in an ice-cold glass, the more beautiful,the better. Swish the vermouth around the glass, coating the sides. When you’re done, toss it in the sink.
In a shaker, put two ounces of gin. I like Bombay Saphire, but you can like something else. Add several cubes of ice, and shake like the Lord is afixing to call you home.
When your arm gets tired, strain into the glass you previously swished good with vermouth, and add two giant olives–giant, I say.
While you’re drinking this, make another, and drink it right away.
Now lie down.
Sounds delicious but more like a recipe for fruit salad. And what’s with tossing the vermouth?
Dry martinis feature very, very little vermouth. Comical dry martini recipes call for such things as waving the vermouth bottle over the glass or coating the glass with vermouth and then throwing the glass away. Of course, without some vermouth, one is simply drinking gin.
And here I’ve been mixing them 2:1 – so much for trusting the Internet.
A proper dry martini is one part dry vermouth to two parts gin. Use less vermouth than that and you’re having a glass of gin, not a martini.
A friend of ours liked to say that he made his dry martinis by simply whispering the word “vermouth” over his gin 🙂
Additionally, Professor Coyne is only 63, and thus would not qualify as a “old” fart.
[side note – one has really “made it” when after typing “how old is XX” into google and a picture and brief bio appears!!]
Jerry, language evolves. Come to peace with it.
Oh for crying out loud. Thanks very much for the tone trolling.
The language evolves, of course, but it evolves very slowly, and most vogue expressions, nonstandard usages, and poor grammar never become acceptable. Instead, discouraged, they simply pass out of common use.
Hear, hear.
Not knowing the difference between less and fewer is irritating, but what gets me from nature documentaries and press articles is:
“lizards, insects, fish and animals”
+10 for less and fewer!
Weird Al making the world a better place, one sign at a time.
As a rule I’m not bothered in the least by this type of thing (and can’t judge because I butcher the English language when I feel like it) but I must come up with a few possibilities because I can’t resist this thread.
Things I say often that annoy me and yet I still say them:
– Touch base. I say this so much I’ve become sick of it, but it’s a perfect catch-all for so many things I don’t want to out and out say (I’m vaguely annoyed with you, You haven’t updated me in a month so wondering if you’re dead or in a cult, I have a totally random list of things to talk about.)
– Referring to groups of children as friends. Alright now, friends, let’s… Sometimes I call them childrens for fun.
– You’re fine. It’s the new “don’t worry about it.” “Oh, I burned your house down while you were on vacation, sorry!” “Oh, you’re fine girl” Yeah. I say ‘girl too. I’m part of the problem.
– I’m such a nerd. It’s gone from self-effacing and apologetic (I’m such a nerd for asking this, but…) to humble brag, and I really don’t have any nerd creds. But I don’t have another phrase lined up.
Phrases I’ve been conditioned away from, because I usually here them in annoying contexts. If you use these, you are the exception, really!
– Unpack this. Not as in a suitcase, as in an idea.
– Drill down – See above.
– Data-driven. I know, I know, I’m saying this on a science website, it’s horrible. But in my life, this often means someone is going to make me take elaborate and time consuming data on some extraneous thing so that we can show the five page line graph charting the number of times Person X sneezed in the last month, in five minute increments. See, it’s data! Voila! Data driven!
Phrases that various members of my family can’t stand, in no particular order:
– Deets (for details), cuddle, snuggle, y’ins, y’all, Meemaw (for Grandma), whimsical, inappropriate, intense experience, hard core, fortuitous (when misused as a synonym for fortunate)
How timely, on the word ‘obsessed’:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/fashion/obsessed-youre-not-alone.html?pagewanted=all
I’d also put the word ‘randomly’ in with ‘obsessed’. Suddenly that word is everywhere.
Also, I must add to my list above: Describing females with an excessive number of adjectives beginning with /f/. Fierce, fabulous, fantastical, ferocious…
Problem?
I am all of those. And that’s just the “F”s.
I don’t know, I guess that’s the thing about any such lists – totally subjective. I’m just not a fan of the /f/ word trend. I think Tyra Banks overdid the word ‘fierce’ and its all seemed like overkill to me since then. I prefer to be described as ‘quirky’, ‘quiet but worth getting to know’, etc. Maybe this is me seeing everything through the filter of a rather shy introvert, but I’m just not in love with the ‘fab fierce and feisty!’ adjective trend for women. Could we at least get a new phoneme in there?
On a side note, I wish we could have another thread for recent additions to the language that we like. I’m fond of ‘glurge’ and ‘ish’, myself.
Anyone who claims to be proactive needs to be hurt.
Also, lately I’ve been hating “the feels”. No, it doesn’t make you sound cute.
Yeah, yeah, the above is full of errors. Self-rationalizing now. I’m proud, to be part of the problem, ya hear y’all peeps! I mean whatEVA. Grammar sux, yeah!
Duh.
Well, duh.
“Did you find everything you were looking for, sir?” As a matter of fact, no. Please direct me to the free item aisle, and I’ll happily top off this cart. Also: “Did you find everything all right, sir?” Well, perhaps not. A cumqwat in the produce section smelled a bit off, and a wad of gum someone spit onto the floor below the pie crusts shelf ought to be removed before someone steps on it and tracks it all over the store.
“Super!” caused me to cringe when it was in vogue four decades ago. Its usage almost completely disappeared, eventually, a fact that prevents me from succumbing to absolute pessimism.
On its heels came many years of speech delivered in incomplete sentences? Spoken as questions? A pattern often repeated in media? Frequently written into sitcom dialogue, but also utilized in commercials? Most frequently by younger females?
Apologies to our site host, but the relatively recent (and egregiously abused) “Really?” grates on me much like the examples above. On the other hand, however, a timely, droll, and witheringly sarcastic “Really!” may be appropriately devastating.
I like ‘duh’ and ‘doh!”
I seem to recall a story about a Texas oilman who sent his son to Harvard so he could learn to say ‘Rilly?’ when he meant to say ‘Bowlshit!’.
“Backstory” for story.
‘Backstory’ has a very specific and legitimate use when, in an ongoing narrative (say a TV series) we get given some details of ‘past history’ (e.g how the hero acquired his magical sword; or how the hero and villain first met – that sort of thing). But in any case other than that, it is, as you say, just a story.
Herstory.
Thanks! Good to know there is real meaning and use for it, as opposed to how I always hear it used.
What really chaps my ass (sorry if “chaps my ass” chaps anyone’s ass!) is the use of the
word “surreal” to describe any experience even slightly out of the ordinary. “I got
stuck in traffic for an hour–it was surreal!” The restaurant was out of half the items on the menu–it was surreal!” Doesn’t anyone have experiences that strike them as rococo, dada, minimalist, or ANYTHING but “surreal”???
In my early years as a programmer we used to describe really convoluted code as “baroque”.
Funny one. Remember the one that goes, ” (“It’s not a bug; it’s an undocumented feature!”?
May have used that once or twice. And we called (call) it spaghetti code.
Right! I used to use that term too. Ah, the good old days.
Does that mean you’ve stopped writing that kind of code or you’ve found another name for it? 😀
What has the condition of your donkey’s skin got to do with anything? Or did you mean “arse” 😉
I think we here in the United States are more resistant to evolving language. In “The Professor and the Madman,” Simon Winchester observes that colonized cultures are less likely to tolerate changes in language than the founding country. Not that I don’t have my own annoyances. Detes for details is pretty stupid sounding to me. (Not sure if that’s how that “word” is spelled.) I do think we have to be careful when ascribing motivations to a person’s use of language that might not be even remotely true though. It’s so easy to project – especially with informal writing. I am often enough accused of being a snobby, pseudo-intellectual on FB, and I can only assume this is because the person accusing me of this doesn’t know one or more of the words I’ve used in trying to communicate with them. They consider that a personal affront. I’ve never heard of totes, but will admit I kind of like using peeps once in a while. I can’t imagine wanting to do that on somebody else’s website though, so no worries. : )
Good book. I think most of the people who have taken the time to post here would enjoy it.
I’ll second the recommendation. A very interesting read.
Future Prospect goes well with Past History.
A prime beef of mine is when Americans (TV announcers even!)refer to ‘the Wimbleton Championships”.
I also hate when politicians spawned that phrase, now overused by the common folk — “the way forward”.
I meant “hated”… typo. I also hate “it’s all good”. When is it ever all good?!
I think Bob Dylan would agree with you regarding “it’s all good”…
It’s All Good by Bob Dylan with Robert Hunter
Talk about me babe, if you must
Throw on the dirt, pile on the dust
I’d do the same thing if I could
You know what they say, they say it’s all good
All good
It’s all good
Big politician telling lies
Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies
Don’t make a bit of difference, don’t see why it should
But it’s all right, ’cause it’s all good
It’s all good
It’s all good
Wives are leavin’ their husbands, they beginning to roam
They leave the party and they never get home
I wouldn’t change it, even if I could
You know what they say man, it’s all good
It’s all good
All good
Brick by brick, they tear you down
A teacup of water is enough to drown
You ought to know, if they could they would
Whatever going down, it’s all good
All good
Say it’s all good
People in the country, people on the land
Some of them so sick, they can hardly stand
Everybody would move away, if they could
It’s hard to believe but it’s all good
Yeah
The widow’s cry, the orphan’s plea
Everywhere you look, more misery
Come along with me, babe, I wish you would
You know what I’m sayin’, it’s all good
All good
I said it’s all good
All good
Cold-blooded killer, stalking the town
Cop cars blinking, something bad going down
Buildings are crumbling in the neighborhood
But there’s nothing to worry about, ’cause it’s all good
It’s all good
They say it’s all good
I’ll pluck off your beard and blow it in your face
This time tomorrow I’ll be rolling in your place
I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could
You know what they say, they say it’s all good
It’s all good
Copyright © 2009 by Special Rider Music and Ice-Nine Publishing
Saul Goode. Noam Zane?
Wow.. thanks for the lyrics!