I can’t believe no one has mentioned supposably.
I had a boss who said that. Very irritating.
This “orientated” thing is killing me. It just sounds WRONG. But this is what my dictionary says:
[/QUOTE]
v. (or’.e.ent) oriented, -enting, -ents. Also or.i.en.tate, -tated, -tating, -tates. -tr. 1. To locate or place in a particular relation to the points of the compass: orient the swimming pool north and south. 2. To discover the bearings of. Often used reflexively: He oriented himself by finding a familiar landmark.
[/QUOTE]
Both examples use orient as opposed to orientate…so that seems MORE correct, although it seems orientated is techinically correct.
Sorry, it just drives me crazy to hear “orientate”…doesn’t sound like a real word. Makes much more sense to say * “He needed to orient himself, and then he would be oriented correctly”*. I really think “orient” and “oriented” is the preferred usage. But it might very well come down to British English vs. American English. Kinda like when I told my British friends that “aluminium” (al.you.min.ee.um) wasn’t correct because it is spelled “aluminum” (a.loo.min.um) on the periodic table…they said that on THEIR (British) periodic table, it is actually spelled “aluminium”.
And on a different note, “I could care less” has been driving me NUTS!!! For it to make sense and be correct, it is “I could not care less”…meaning your amount of interest is so small, you could not have any smaller amount of interest!! Get it??? Repeat after me:
"I COULDN’T CARE LESS"
If you are saying “I COULD care less”, that means you care about it!!!
SHEESH…now that I have THAT off my chest, I think I’ll go jump off a bridge. WHEEEEEE!! splat
Gosh, I have so Many! I’m surprised no one’s mentioned “assure, ensure, insure”. Please, for the love of the Deity, DON’T say “I just want to insure you’ll be there” when you mean you want to ENSURE they’ll be there. ENSURE is NOT the same as INSURE.
And this really bugs me: the conversational fillers, when, y’know, people who, y’know, can’t seem to get, y’know, more than, y’know, three words out, y’know, without saying “y’know”. I end up counting y’knows and lose track of whatever they think they’re trying to say.
For those who object to verbing nouns and vice versa, I’ve finally given in and have decided to just run with it. For example, this weekend my husband and I are going to food and beverage, then movie. (A personal family favorite is to ordeal something, as in “we’re going to ordeal Christmas with Grandma this year”).
Finally, I’ve at last been trained out of saying “Equally as”, as in: He’s equally as handsome as his brother.
I see what you mean now, Spoonbender. “Uprise” is indeed a redundant word, and I’ll probably make an effort to no longer use it, as I tend to remain conscious of that kind of thing once it’s brought to my attention. Thinking about it though, I find it interesting how ingrained this redundancy is within the language. “There’s been a peasant uprising.”, or, “The meek are rising up to take their place as owners of the world.” And as such is the pattern with that which arises, so must it eventually meet it’s downfall. 
and reigning champ for some time now is “continue ON”.
It’s one thing when Joe Sixpack says it… I find that plenty irritating enough. But it has seeped into the speech of newscasters, politicians, teachers, and others who are presumably well-educated.
For those who might not realize it, this is a redundant phrase. You simply “continue”, or perhaps you “go on”, you do not “continue on”. Argh.
And of course, an old favorite that will certainly never improve: any modification of the word “unique” “VERY unique” “Extremely” “most” “totally”, etc. ARGH.
stoid
I think I do the “like” thing. I hate it, I wish I could stop… but I can’t… sniff.
I received a Thank-You card from a former student. It said, “Your the best.” Apparently I’m not, if I was unable to teach her the difference between “your” and “you’re.” Sigh.
As for kids saying “like” very often, I thought it was just a New England thing. Is it the same elsewhere? My students say it constantly. (Plus, I must admit, it slips out of my mouth once in a while in informal conversations; I’m not that much older than they are.)
“Having said that” ect ect.
Generally used by someone who doesn’t know what to say next.
Another painfull one is “Moreover” , generally used by polititions. It some how makes them sound like they know what they are talking about.
Reading this thread has made me paranoid. I am guilty of some of these misuses. I tend to adopt a casual tone while speaking, and often use filler words. I am not an english major, and generally use words as they are commonly spoken, regardless of whether or not they are technically correct.
Go ahead. Pick away at the above sentences.
My pet peeve is the use of how come. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but whenever I hear it, my spine stiffens. I prefer why.
My ex-mother in law says warsh instead of wash. Why do people put an r in that word?
“Having said that” ect ect.
Generally used by someone who doesn’t know what to say next.
Another painfull one is “Moreover” , generally used by polititions. It some how makes them sound like they know what they are talking about.
There was a book about this called, and I love this wrongusageness:
Word Usage and Abusage
My latest peeve is major, professional networks and publications using the wrong spelling of words. “Spellcheck” alone isn’t good enough, people. You have to have the RIGHT WORD to begin with!
I recently saw a hotel advertising a New Year’s Eve dinner featuring Main Lobster. Come on! There is no excuse for laziness like that!
On the back of a semi-truck: “SAFTEY FIRST!” (and spelling last, apparently – this was not a bumpersticker or something, it was painted RIGHT ON THE TRUCK! I imagine all the trucks owned by this company must have the same bizarre misspelling on them.)
I was reading some bestseller the other day and there was a wrong word that just floored me. I can’t think of what it was now, but it was so jarring that I can’t believe it got past an editor and into a million printed books.
Extra-special internet pet peeve: Not knowing how to spell a foreign word (or maybe not even KNOWING it’s a foreign word) and making up your own spelling: wallah, boocoo, pursay, she-she. There are probably more, but those are the ones I can think of.
“Pet Peeve” seems to me to describe only one thing. Namely, the thing that irritates you most. It is impossible to have more than one pet peeve.
Yet, I come upon people in daily life who have a list of “pet peeves.” If you have more than one, it’s hardly your pet. Rather, it’s just a “peeve.”
The ones that really irritate me? “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” bugs the hell out of me. Also signs that say “No Smoking Allowed” ( not very common these days, now they use the cigarette with a line through it). “No Smoking Allowed” `means that you don’t have to smoke there. And those no smoking icons seem to indicate that it’s okay to smoke pipes, joints, etc, as long as you don’t light up a cigarette.
It seems to be a recent trend to say “How <adjective> is that?” and it really gets to me.
Another 1 that bugs me? People saying “My bad” when admitting guilt. MY bad WHAT??? Also, I hate it when people use a preposition to end a sentence with.
The one that gets my goat is when someone uses ‘axe’ instead od ‘ask’. ‘Let me axe you a question.I axed him already.’
It makes me want to spit!
The use of ideal when the speaker means idea. This is usually a problem with 5 year olds, but I’ve run into a handful of otherwise normal adults who speak this way.
My other least favorite is saying something weighs a kilogram, or using feet to measure area.
Wrong. The plural of octopus in English is octopuses. This is such a common error, caused by mistaking octopus for a Latin word (just because it ends in -us doesn’t necessarily make it Latin) and using a pseudo-Latin plural ending. It is not a Latin word at all; it comes from Greek oktopous. Applying the Greek plural form would give you octopodes, which is probably acceptable in English scientific writing, but octopuses is better for everyday use.
This is what happens when classical Greek and Latin are deleted from the curriculum. They used to be studied by all educated people in Western civilization. No longer.
Because the stress shifted in the original Latin words when the adjectival ending was applied; in certain words unstressed e shifted to i. This is a feature that has been traced back to Proto-Indo-European and accounts for some regular vowel shifts in the daughter languages. You can see this sort of thing in Spanish as well–for example, from the noun pueblo comes the adjective poblano. The original Latin *o[i/] shifted to ue in Spanish when stressed, but remained o when unstressed.
Linguists usually avoid such terms because they’re not well defined. They analyze regional linguistic variations in terms of isoglosses, which are individual variants that often cross and overlap.
I have often heard ESL people say “dialog” when they mean “dialect.” “People from there speak with a dialogue.”
Green Acres: Patty Duke makes a guest appearance in her British persona.
Eva Gabor: Look, honey, she speaks with an accident!
Eddy Albert: Look who’s talking about speaking with an accident.
I hate, dislike, find offensive and abhor the use of the ‘street mangled’ word ‘disrespect’ which has been hacked up into the end result of ‘dis’ or ‘dissin’’ (never dissing).
Then the famous ‘I aint got none,’ found in great favor among the inhabitants of certain, small, interesting trailer parks located on the edges of cities and small towns.
Followed closely by the ever popular ‘who you.’