ah, I knew all but the nonplussed one, but if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word 
I was reminded of this one by today’s comics page: miss not
“I miss not having a car.”
No. Unless you currently HAVE a car, and you miss the blissful state of having to walk or bum rides, you MISS HAVING a car. You used to HAVE a car (but not anymore), and you MISS it.
Think about it, people.
Which comic?
Please tell me this is a joke.
[obscure humor]
Maybe he’s a disciple of Werner Erhard…
[/obscure humor]
Barry
Nah, if he were he’d say “communTheForum, capitalTheForum,” etc.
Speaking of which, why don’t people acknowledge the existence of subjunctivity? I admit, I don’t understand it as well as I’d like, but at least I can say “If I were to understand it, I’d be happy” instead of “If I was…” It’s a conditional phrase, leading to different conjugation.
That would be Shoe.
Mistakes like those make me crazy. “Should of” sucks.
George Carlin covered it, but “near miss” is fucking stupid.
Scarlett, are you sure that “I miss the time when I didn’t have a car” wasn’t the intent of the phrase? Sounds like a joke to me.
Hmm… I guess it’s remotely possible the speaker does currently have a husband and misses not having one… although the rest of the strip indicates otherwise. For shame, MacNelly, for shame!
“Should of” reminds me of another (or maybe it was the est references) – people who want to try and do something. No, you want to try to do something. If you try and do something, you succeed in doing it.
“Could care less” is (allegedly) sarcastic and thus meaningful. (see Quinion).
Now “cheap at half the price”, that’s stupid.
“Allegedly” is the key word here. As stated in the article cited above:
I think the writer is being way too charitable when he assumes that the wrongly used phrase is “clearly logical nonsense” and that “the intent is obviously sarcastic.” Every single time I have corrected somebody on their use of the phrase, they insist that their version (“could care less”) is the correct one, and that it is how they have always heard it spoken. Not once has somebody informed me that they are using it in an ironic sense. I do realize that it could be used ironically (and it probably was used that way originally), and that is why I started off my post by saying that anybody who purposely warps the English language for the sake of irony can just go ahead and skip this thread.
As for “cheap at half the price,” I’ve always taken a bit of pleasure in using that phrase as a coded insult when describing a merchant’s wares, knowing full well that he will probably not get the joke and think I am complimenting him. Once again, the mangled phrase has been used so often that too many people now use it in place of the original “cheap at twice the price,” thinking it means the same thing.
Barry
Come to think of it, the word “obvious” - which crops up in sports circles very, very, frequently - is just icky. If something’s obvious, you don’t need to mention it; if it’s not obvious, don’t classify it as such.
This doesn’t mean nothing is ever obvious; I just wish people wouldn’t overuse it.
I suppose I could add “needless to say” and “not to mention” to the list of gross abuses, although I don’t think people will EVER stop using those phrases and then immediately stating exactly what supposedly doesn’t need to be said.
Sometimes, just to confuse people, I will say “not to mention…” When asked “not to mention what?” I respond, “If I wanted to mention it, I wouldn’t have said ‘not to mention.’”
And yes, I do get a lot of strange looks from people I talk to, why do you ask?
Barry
That was an example I made up, based on the common misuse. People say “I miss not X” when they CLEARLY mean that they miss X. I have NEVER heard “I miss not X” used to mean “I miss not X,” even as a joke.
“I miss not living in the country. I liked the solitude, being surrounded by nature, having lots of space, not feeling crowded in, etc.” WRONG. You MISS LIVING in the country.
It’s a very common error and I hear it quite frequently. People who say this also seem very likely to say they are unthawing some chicken. Unless the chicken is already thawed and they’re freezing it again, this is also wrong wrong wrong.
dantheman, I think we’ll have to blane Chris Cassatt for that one – MacNelly’s dead! 
Yeah, but the strip still carries his name …
I’ve frequently heard “I miss not” when “I miss not” is indeed meant, though.
One of the more bothersome terms to my ears has been used mostly in commercials or other adverts.
{dumbass announcer)“Now save MORE than half off”. Actual savings percentage usually 49% or sometimes 50% but almost never 51% or more.
I’ve encountered a number of people who think that dethaw is a word. As in, “I need to dethaw the steak from the freezer for dinner tonight.” No actually you need to thaw it. Dethaw-ing something, I suppose, would involve freezing it.
Then there was my idiot coworker who used “pacific” when she meant “specific”. That’s less common though not unheard of.
I think I mentioned this in another thread just recently, too, but I really get bothered by people who over-use the word “utilize”. Most of the time, “use” would be just as good, but it sounds more technical to “utilize” something I guess.
How 'bout I “utilize” my foot up yer arse?
“I could care less” may not be used with intentional irony, but I feel sure it started off as an ironic phrase, similar to, “I could give two shits what you think about my use of sarcastic cliches.” Like many idioms (idia?), most speakers know the meaning of the phrase without ever having parsed the phrase’s individual words.
And the substitution of “like” for “say” is a brilliant addition to the language. “I was like, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’” means something closer to, “I said something along the lines of, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’” than, “I said, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’” It implies that the following quote is not verbatim, but rather may be a paraphrase.
The worst abuse of the English language, IMO, is attempting to enclose it within spiky cast-iron fencing. The language is alive and breathing, a magnificent protoplasmic entity that defies any attempt to categorize and contain it. Objecting to new words is at best useless and at worst destructive to the language.
That said, I’m a hypocrite. Words who add nothing beyond pretension to the language, including a lot of modern businessspeak, are odious. Talk about “envisioning strategic processes” and the like pisses me off.
In general, however, the correct approach to neologisms, I think, is to treat them with utmost charity and optimism. Watch them, listen to them, roll them around on your tongue. Search for the nuances, the connotations, the allusions they carry that distinguish them from paleologisms. Only discard them if they truly bring nothing new to the language.
Such discards should be rare.
Daniel
Once upon a time, I was marking an (undergrad psych) essay which was replete with the phrase ‘rest bite care’…