Gah...must.....rant....tooo many incidents of 'incidences'

Aughhhh - news anchors, newspapers, everybody now pluralizes '‘incident’ by using ‘incidences’

It’s wrong. Dead wrong. Incorrect. Not right. Erroneous. It hasn’t even been bastardized into English the way so many mistakes have been. They are two different meanings and to use the plural of ‘incidence’ when you should use ‘incidents’ just makes you sound like a moron.

Please pass this on to whoever still hasn’t gotten the memo.

I haven’t seen that example yet, but I expect to any day now. Other stuff I see popping up in news articles makes me wonder – is English (American English, etc.) a prerequisite for journalism any more, or do they just breeze past it these days?

Can you show some cites of this usage?

:stuck_out_tongue:
No, what we really need are QUOTES. Quiddity, show us some quotes!

I’m not sure I see the problem… I guess it depends on usage. “Incident” refers to (in journalistic use) an event. “Incidents” refers to many such events. “Incidences” I would take to mean “examples of an event”. Not right to do a direct switch to plural, but still fine to use in many occasions.

Aside from helping language to evolve by bastardizing it, the eternal gift of the polloi is to provide the educated with the opportunity to be superior.

It is annoying, but without linguistic incompetence, pedantry loses the delicious smugness of correcting inferior usage.

Let us forgive them, for they know not what they do. We do, and it is sooo satisfying to point out the difference.

Edited for effect.

Watches rows of heads explode

With a cite only slightly more authoritative than Wiki, Dictionary.com says Poo Poo to you!

I notice there are several different incidence there from six different dictionary.

Incidence. Singular. Not the slattern ‘s’ plunked willynilly at the end.