Yet another ship that, unfortunately, has sailed
A friend and I were talking the other day and the subject of Japan came up. He referred to the “Empirical Family”.
He also told me about getting corrected in a meeting when he kept talking about “tangenital points” (as opposed to “tangential points”).
Very sharp guy, too. I find little slips like this amusing.
I can’t present this as a new idea since I probably said it the last time I got into a thread with a similar theme, but one of my old chess buddies would always say when I made some surprise move that got two of his pieces in jeopardy, “Hey, that’s not cultured!” (I have to assume the word kosher never appeared to him in a context other than pickles and bacon.)
Bronze penis, show me the way!
Huh, I’ve been using it wrong… I was under the impression that decimate meant “reduce to a tenth” i.e., destroy 90%. Sorry!
Nope, but I can’t deny perhaps a touch of
I now have a new word to spring on him next time I see him. It’s been years and the last time was in Kroger late one night. He was buying some souse.
Yeah. And now that I think about it, she may have said it like that on purpose. She was quoting it for a class project (it was supposedly a piece of advice that her father had given her years ago). Either she misheard it, or her father purposely changed the phrase.
There’s one that bothers me a lot at the moment, but unfortunately the facts are against me, where regional usage trumps all.
And that is “alternate” when you mean “alternative”.
“Alternate” already means one thing, to move from one state to another and back repeatedly. That is “alternating,” where you “alternate” from one to the other.
When referring to a second option that may also be applied, that is an “alternative”.
“Alternate” already has its own very distinct meaning, “Alternative” already has its own meaning. Using the one word for both meanings pisses me off.
But it seems that the dictionary, especially for US usage, has decided I’m a fool to get upset.
shakes fist at dictionary
GAH! Is this a new trend? Because I’ve seen it here on the Dope in the last couple weeks, and the *principal of my daughter’s school *used it in the opening of a newsletter article! :smack::smack::smack:
Urge to kill rising, rising . . .
I love it when profession newspeople . . . whose job entails knowledge of the English language . . . make mistakes that they should have corrected in 3rd grade. I recently heard a CNN anchor say “to him and I.”
“Up and Adam!”
Hmmm. Linguists would probably say that several of your entries are actually examples of “African American Vernacular English” rather than merely “mangled phrases.” AAVE has a somewhat long and interesting history in the United States. AAVE has pronunciation, grammatical structures, and vocabulary in common with various West African languages. African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia
I know that while some people can effortlessly move back and forth between “standard English” and AAVE, others only speak AAVE. The latter is probably not a good thing as far as certain job interviews and other opportunities go. Of course, we could have whole threads and doctoral dissertations about AAVE’s “legitimacy,” etc. However, I just wanted to note that I see some of the items on your list as far different from, for example, Onomatopoeia’s list. (Deteriate, expresso, supposably, etc.) People who say things from the Onomatopoeia list should just be killed, most likely.
This should be your favorite, 'cause it’s a good song. My mom used to sing it to us. 
You mean like unnecessary ellipses?
I just now got an email from a Director at our Fortune 500 company, who I have a lot of repect for. Until I read in this email “for all intensive purposes.”
The other day a coworker was saying “So I e-mailed him and I about the… Him and I? Him and me? I always mix those up. I e-mailed I? No. I e-mailed me? Yeah, I would say I e-mailed me.”
I had to pipe up “No you wouldn’t. I e-mailed myself.” But it sounds a little wonky to say I e-mailed him and myself.
I once had the misfortune to be buttonholed by a moron who ended each sentence with “Ya’unnerstan’?” with a nasal twang. And he was speaking Swedish, not English.
Try “quote, end quote” instead.
Because it should be “The <whatever> comprises <other things>”, not the other way round. Cite.
Did you read your citation? Or mine?
Hmm, not as thoroughly as I should have it seems. Must take out my copy of Bill Bryson’s dictionary of troublesome words which I might have misremembered in the first place.
In California, teachers and school administrators must be certificated.
I could never understand how, in a field where there are mobs of English teachers, grammarians, and pedants, no one ever explained to the state board that the action is “to certify”, the piece of paper is the “certificate”, and if someone has the piece of paper, they are “certified”.
I’m of the opinion that the state board is certifiable.