Or HIV virus.
The worst, the absolute worst, is “snuck” as the past tense of “sneak.” Anyone who does it should be beaten with a truncheon. It doesn’t even make linguistic sense. I can’t think of a single “-eak” or “-eek” verb that inflects “-uck” or even another example that people inflect that way incorrectly. So why do it with “sneak”?
See, Otto, I think the absolute worst is “drug” as the past tense of “to drag”. My fiance used that once and I teased him unmercifully about being straight out of Missouri. Sure, he looked it up in the dictionary and it’s in there as a colloquialism, but it makes me wince.
Oh, cher, I hear you loud and clear. I recall from a college logic class that begging the question is more or less the same thing as a circular argument, which sounds like what you are saying is the right way.
I don’t hear people use it the wrong way too often … you’d think it would be easy just to say, “This debate provokes the question of…” I do hear people use it as an accusation of circular logic when in fact the “circular logic” is merely a definition, not a syllogism. Not germane to your post, but germane to the OP, I guess.
Ok, my favorite misused 50 cent word is: penultimate. It’s usually used by someone who throws fancy words around trying to sound real smart. Inevitably it’s used as a synonym for “one step better than ultimate,” or “ultimate-ultimate,” as in: “The Godfather” is Francis Ford Coppola’s penultimate directorial achievement. In fact, it means second to last as in: "The Godfather: Part II is the penultimate movie in the “Godfather” series.
I guess there are ignorant people everywhere and there’s not much we can do about that, but my pet peeves are TV news anchors who say things that are so plainly wrong. Those people do have an obligation to speak correctly.
In the “could of” category: using “is” instead of “has” like in “Clinton is decided to…” or “help is been sent” I hear this all the time and it makes me cringe. I am surprised it has not been mentioned before in this thread.
Impact is much abused when the correct word would be effect (noun) or “affect”. Which brings me to people who confuse effect and affect as verbs. They are totally different
An expression that I hate is “a high rate of speed”. How convoluted can you get? What’s the difference with just going “fast”?
Words and expressions that are often used incorrectly do end up changing their meaning. Rather than defend the old “correct” use or the new “popular” meaning, I think it is best to just avoid them until their meaning has settled and does not invite confusion.
I also dislike politically correct euphemisms. They sound so stupid.
It’s funny that English not being my native language I seem to notice these things much more than native speakers.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
My favorite is “peruse”.
Most people use the word as if it means “to glance over briefly, or skim”. (I’ll quickly peruse these reports and get them right back to you).
But it actually means “to study in detail”.
I also get a kick out of nauseous vs. nauseated. According to the dictionary they are interchangeable in meaning, but I always learned that to be nauseous was to make others feel nauseated. So whenever someone says they feel nauseous, I feel like saying “yep”. 
Ignorant since 1972
I hate it when people, typically TV newscasters, confuse irony with coincidence.
Or
VIN number
PCV valve
Please RSVP
Umm…what’s wrong with “Free microwave’s included?” Granted, it should be A Free microwave’s included," but surely you don’t think they’re giving away multiple microwaves to each tennant?
Also, with the myriad of replies this thread has gotten, I’m surprised nobody has pointed out that one. It’s just MYRIAD, people! Get it through your skulls.
Myriad = many, not lot, as in “a myriad of”.
A saw has myriad teeth, not a myriad of teeth.
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, beleived by a majority of the people.
-Giordano Bruno
thanks Shayna, I’m glad you didn’t post that one. Does it hurt anyone else to hear:
I seen you yesterday.
Oh I hate it when seen is used incorrectly.
Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse.
::Ahem::
That’s one tasty foot.
A little counter-nitpicking: Dorf, “PCV” stands for “Positive Crankcase Ventilation”, which means the phrase “PCV valve” is not redundant.
First, sorry for the multi-post. I’m such a goomer!
Second, I noticed an ad in the paper today for a store having an IRS sale. Obviously they are staging this sale to coincide with Tax day, hence IRS. The acronym IRS had an asterisk next to it, which let to a footnote that explained IRS stands for “Inventory Reduction Sale”. The redundancy of “Inventory Reduction Sale sale” was enough to sicken one.
I am interested in the post that dealt with use of the word “myself”. I find myself using this word to sound verbose and important in the role of teacher, but never in the company of friends and peers. It IS a huge put-on word!!
Sweet Basil
SRB will get you girls!!
Ooh! Ooh! I thought of more!
How about some more mis-uses of the word hell? Like “hell with it” and “the hell if I am”. What does that mean? Shouldn’t it be “to hell with it” and “like hell I am”? Also check out the thread titles- rife with grammar blunders: “What’s some gross things you saw other kids do?”, “College going-ons”, etc…
Sweet Basil
SRB will get you girls!!
My two favs, taken from student papers (4th year university, no less!)
“For all intensive purposes”
and
“He prolly wanted me to be an engineer, but I want to be an editor.”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
E.
“Black holes were created when God divided by 0” ~Wally
Boris B., I think your dictionary is wrong. It’s changing its definition of the English language to fit our mistakes. Pretty soon, we’ll see “it’s” as a legal possessive, since most people use it that way anyway. (My dictionary lists “irregardless” as an alternate form of regardless. Dern hippy dictionary.)
On the other hand, if we didn’t eventually accept mistakes as part of the language, English just wouldn’t be English. It’d still be Latin I suppose.
(I still get upset over “the exception which proves the rule”, which Cecil covered, and “across”, which does not have an invisible “t” at the end.)
And I’d like to change our use of quotes in English. I think a quote should be treated as a single entity, with inside punctuation staying inside and outside punctuation staying outside.
She asked “Really?”.
Did you shout “Fire!”?
“e,”, “e.”, and “e” are different strings.
See? Makes sense to me anyway.
Your Quadell
Not, “Pollution Control Valve?”
Did it at least used to be that?
Okay, Quadell, my dictionary may be wrong, but could you be a little more specific about where? I’ve made couple of points on this thread and I don’t know which you are disagreeing with Merriam and Webster and me on.
Hopefully, I can convince you to accept “hopefully” as a disjunct adverb.
Frankly, I would be lying if I said I were confident.
Perhaps this subject is simply too complex for me to explain.
Unfortunately, I would be lucky to explain my way out of a paper bag.