I think the real difference is that some people have become accustomed to hearing politicians say “an historic” but not “an history.”
If it’s just the counting of words that matters, you can say “It needs washing.”
“Dirty.”
I swear I just heard someone say “an heinous crime” (pronounced “an anus crime”) on Fox News. Cringe.
Yea that should be “an heinal crime”
This, according to one of my HS English teachers. “An historic,” but “a history.”
When I’m God Emperor of the World high school English teachers will be first against the wall.
Because the Brits aspirate the ‘haitch’ of history more than 'istoric…
I know the “This is how you < noun >” thing has already been covered, but I just got reaggravated by an IHOP ad telling me “This is how you pancake”. Shut up shut up shut up.
More like “This is how you persuade me to never spend a dollar in your store.”
I have seen/heard “pancake” used as a verb, almost exclusively past tense, but it is wholly unrelated to cuisine, more to things like aviation and motor sports.
If I schedule a meeting for 2pm and someone says “Can we push the meeting up an hour?” is there a standard definition for whether this means 1pm or 3pm? Different people seem to mean different things. And no one realizes that it’s ambiguous. To me, “push” sounds like moving it farther away whereas “up” could be viewed as, but certainly doesn’t imply, moving it closer to the top of a to-do list. I no longer try to figure it out from context; when I hear “meeting” and “push” I ask: “Do you mean an hour earlier or an hour later?”
Yeah, and pancaking is never, ever a good thing.
Some days you’re the pancake; some days you’re the grill.
And on alternate Thursdays you can be the turner. 
And collapsed parking garages.
“bro”
I don’t think I’ve heard “push”, it’s usually “move it up an hour”. I think to most people that would mean make it an hour earlier, but I agree it’s annoyingly subject to misinterpretation. So I prefer to say something like “can we make it an hour earlier, and start at 1:00” or words to that effect. No pushing up, falling down, or any other gymnastics involved!
If somebody told me they wanted to “push a meeting up” I’d have two conflicting thoughts:
- They want to invite the boss of whoever was chairing the meeting.
- They want it held in a conference room on the next higher floor in our building.
I’m really tired of how the perfectly useful word “narrative” has (a) become wildly overused and (b) come to mean “bullshit story.”
Ascenray mentioned the overuse of the word way back in post 239, but I don’t think he/she pointed out the re-definition of the word.
This is not really aggravating, but I work with a lot of people from India, and their word for moving a meeting earlier is “prepone.” I’ve pointed out to several of them that it makes sense, and I sort of like it, but it’s not standard in US English, and they’re always surprised to find that out.