When I can, I find a way to fire back, “orientationized,” just to make 'em look silly.
I always get alarmed when a waitress offers me a mescaline salad (usually with vinegar-ette dressing).
And I hate the way most Americans pronounce “noir” as in film noir: like “no-wahr.” As unusual as it is, the word has one syllable and no “o” sound in it.
I get very :mad: when I see people mistakenly use “loose” instead of “lose”. A team doesn’t “loose” a game, idiots! :smack:
lissener:
I’m not sure that makes “perfect” semantic sense. It makes good (mocking) sense if “not” is being used as a synonym for “naught” or “nothing about it” , and “could” for “may conceivably”.
“I know nothing about it, and may conceivably care less than nothing.”
But just as stated? Sorta maybe.
A what??? Damn, where do you eat, Timmy Leary’s Diner?
One that’s gotten to me lately… using the word “appraise” when you really mean “apprise”. We’ve got some local broadcasters here who insist on “appraising us of the situation as it develops”.
My teeth hurt…
Slightly off-topic, but you remind me of a diner here with this item on their sandwich menu:
BLT… $2.25 (lettuce-tomato .30 extra)
:smack:
No, it’s not forgivable. It’s = it is. Its X = the X that belongs to it. If you start allowing “it’s” as a possessive, what will we use as a contraction of “it is”? How would you read the first sentence of my post?
Regarding “could/couldn’t care less,” it makes sense the way Baal Houtham rewrote it. “I could care less than nothing.” Fine. But the way it’s used in contemporary speech connotes “I could care less than I currently do,” which to me means that there is some nonzero level of caring going on. I will continue to use “couldn’t,” thank you very much.
Oh, and BarelyAdequate, they should at least have it read
B… $2.25 (LT .30 extra)
Anxious instead of eager. He’s really anxious for Christmas to arrive.
But the #1 thing phrase that drives me up a wall… Very unique. Gahhhhhh!!!
Yeah, that’s my first reaction. The word they’re trying to say is “mesclun.”
Another one that falls harshly on my ears is the phrase “to advocate for” something. You used to just advocate something, not for it. There’s no use fighting this one, though, since it’s become so widely accepted. There are now professional advocates who just go around advocating for things all the time.
The deli next door to my office has “mesculin” (which they pronounce “mess-skew-lynn”) salad and “rueben” sandwiches, but I do give them credit for getting Caesar salad right.
Here are a few that set my teeth on edge: “anyways,” “momento,” and “chomping” at the bit. It’s champing at the bit, mofos, CHAMPING!!!
Several times my boss has said “obtuse” when she meant “abstruse,” and never was it in a situation where I could discreetly let her know (she would be happy to know, which is one of the things I like about her).
For some reason, the last 10 times I’ve seen the word “ridiculous” on the internet, it’s been spelled “rediculous.” 
Wensday/Wenzday is a perfectly correct pronunciation. In American English, voiced consonants following nasal vowels are deleted. The e in Wednesday is nasal and d is a voiced consonant, so it’s deleted, hence Wensday/Wenzday. It’s a difference of dialect if Brits pronounce the d, not an issue of which one is more correct. Likewise with nukular, irregardless, supposably, ign’nt, and many others.
Like it or lump it, the way people speak is rarely a matter of correctness. Most of us here write in Standard American English, but how we speak is probably an entirely different matter. When you start raising the demon of correctness in a discussion of regional variations or differences in dialect, then it just turns into a circle jerk and you accomplish nothing.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to language. Some choices are just more appropriate for the situation than others. Language will change, regardless of how much an individual may resist. We might as well get used to it.
I was taught that the word “quality” usually needs a modifier, so it sorta bugs me when someone says “quality” and I’m supposed to assume they mean “high quality”.
“Quality jewelry” – okay, what kind of quality?
Jewelry’s another one – jew-la-ree. That ain’t right, is it? Isn’t it “jewel-ry”?
I say thee nay foul temptress! I shall not be assimilated! I…
Aw, hell. Who’m I kiddin’?
I don’t think anyone is arguing against language growing and changing; there are just certain things that seem born of laziness that don’t sit right with many, for instance: supposedly/supposably. Why omit the D only to add a B? It doesn’t make any grammatical sense, it’s just easier to say. If making things easier to say is the catalyst for change in accepted grammar, soon gerunds will be more easily recognizable by their -in ending; words with obvious foreign etymologies will be pronounced phonetically; etc.
I don’t agree that there isn’t a right way to speak. There has to be some standardization, accents and regional vernacular aside. Growth is one thing, but complete bastardization is another.
Find many more, including several already mentioned, at:
The site uses “eggcorn” to mean a mangled word that sort of makes sense if you think about it, like “eggcorn” (shape of an egg, roughly, size of a corn kernel, roughly) for “acorn.” Good snarky fun.
I agree. It sounds stupid because it is, Lissener’s insightful post to the contrary. 
I should have used the word ‘understandable’ instead of ‘forgivable’, that’s what I meant.
My late wife would say “six of one and half of another”. I never called her on it but it always bugged me. She also argued that “crick” was a perfectly allowable pronunciation of the word “creek” which always struck me as arrant nonsense. She, a very literate and well spoken women, also insisted on pronouncing “something” as “sumptin’”. She always accused me of pronouncing “with” as “widj”. which of course only happened in her fevered imagination.
A thing that really bothers me is those authors who insist on spelling “All right” as if it were one word; “alright” or those who don’t know the difference between “always” and “all ways”. Don’t these fools have editors?