I think we should eliminate “near miss” from the language. From now on, we’ll have headlines like “Over four hundred people died today when two airplanes barely hit each other.”
This made me laugh out loud. 
That’ll learn him.
That’s kind’ve like people who say “itch” when they mean “scratch”, e.g. “Stop itching your arm.”
And it’s “TO hell with it”, not “the hell with it”. The latter makes no sense.
And “leave it be”, and “let it alone”. :smack:
How about the scissors and the trousers?
I know I’ve posted this often, but it’s center on, not center around..
Also, use the possessive pronoun before a gerund:
Wrong: I don’t mind him borrowing my notes.
Right: I don’t mind his borrowing my notes.
The scissors and the trousers are correct because they are still being used in the plural.
Well, I’ll admit that lots of people use it stupidly. But I don’t think that means the concept has no place in the langauge.
Any apple is unique.
The largest apple is more unique, ie. unique in more ways, or more important ways.
An apple that plays Schubert’s Death and the Maiden in the presense of any hammer is <i>very</i> unique, because it’s unique among even imaginary apples.
Admittedly it’s an extension of the word unqiue to include people’s instinctive perception of it, but I think it’s useful, and should be adopted into the langauge.
Microsoft’s homepage has the slogan “Better… Everyday”, which I think is completely appropriate.
Anyways (makes no sense. Think about it).
Nowandays (already mentioned, but this spelling is a new way to be wrong).
While I won’t necessarily judge someone who uses these “creative” words and phrases, I will automatically label them a non-reader.
I hate the word “Oftentimes.” While it is a word, many of the people I write marketing copy for try to substitute it for often. Rrrrrrgh. I hate that.
Or “going to go ahead and [insert action here].” For example, “I’m going to go ahead and go to the bathroom.” Fuck! Just go to the bathroom, don’t go ahead and go! Just don’t pee on my shoes.
No, “very unique” is simply wrong. The sense you are advocating would be “doubly unique” or something like that. Besides, we all know how “very unique” is used 99% of the time-- it’s used to mean “very unusual”.
As I said, once “unique” degrades to where it means “unusual”, then we lose our single word descrpitor for “one of a kind”. And that is something up with which we should not put!!
Here’s hoping that everyone here will never plan on doing anything ever again!
Let’s all take the pledge to henceforth plan to do everything.
And while we’re at it, we might as well try to never again try and do anything.
Oops, spoke too soon; I must surely be preaching to the choir here. Let’s all plan to try to spread correct usage to the unwashed non-dopers.
Love this thread–thank you, OP!
I spent last noc at a meeting that would not end, listening to my manager say repeatedly, “smoking sensation literature”–instead of smoking cessation literature…
And the borrow/lend thing is enough to make me need meds.
And (this is regional)–you don’t go by someone’s house–you go to someone’s house. People who go “by” a house–I always picture them in the side yard, next to the house!
A “near miss” is a miss which is near the target, as opposed to a miss which is nowhere near the target. In aviation, a “near miss” as reported by a newspaper or TV announcer is usually a failure to maintain minimum separation, such as passing with only 4,500’ vertical separation distance instead of the required 5,000’. “Near miss” sounds more dramatic than “almost a mile apart but closer than they were supposed to be”, though. :rolleyes:
I appreciate the difficulty in finding a word that describes the plane in the scenario given, yet is not “target.” Nevertheless, I find the use of the word “target” to describe a civilian aircraft. . . unsettling.
I just felt the need to put that out there.
I had a news editor who would say otherwise. He would argue that something is either unique or it isn’t. There aren’t degrees of uniqueness.
Unique: 1. one and only; single; sole (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition)
His pet peeve was “pristine.” Something is either pristine, or it isn’t pristine. There is no in between. How can you be “kind of” pure? It’s like being a little pregnant.
I am a private pilot.
Your definition of “near miss” is not the same definition used in journalism (yup, I’m a journalist, too).
A “near miss,” no matter the distance or target, is not the proper grammar to describe two planes NOT hitting each other, which would be a “near crash” or “near collision,” as in: They nearly crashed.
“Near miss” implies that they intended to collide and failed (that one was the “target”).
Can I play, too ?
It’s corned beef, not corn beef. Corning is the process of seasoning and preserving the beef. It really irritates me when I see it spelled correctly on the packaging, but not on anything handwritten. Similarly, it’s iced tea, not ice tea.
I posted this in a recent grammar/spelling thread, but here it is again - moving stairs are escAlators, not escUlators. The coffee is in a percOlator, not a percUlator. I don’t understand why people are making it harder than it has to be.
(This is totally regional - EDmonton is the capital of Alberta, not EMMonton.)
I wish people would realize that sometimes it’s correct to say “me” and not “I.”
For just one of many possible examples:
“This gift is from my husband and I”…is wrong because you can’t say “this gift is from I.” It’s “this gift is from my husband and me.” It’s from him, and it’s from me. See? Me, me, me!