CNN Headline News: Lance Armstrong is a "former cancer survivor”.
PBS Interviewer: “Sir, you’ve studied the Classics, as well as the literature of that era…”
Fox & Friends: “A parade went AW-ree” (awry)
CNBC: “Are concerns over inflation mis-founded?”
Fox News: Myanmar has a “state-run government”.
So, who’s got more?
Are there cites for these? Or are we making them up?
They are things I’ve heard recently either on TV or the radio. I don’t have exact time/date etc.
Don’t see the problem with this.
Nor with this one.
Some sports commentator, narrating highlights: “He sprained his ankle on this play. That was later changed to a knee”
Fox 11 Los Angeles on how a woman attempted to prevent internet hackers from attacking: “She installed electronic security, a phone tracing system, and bought a dog.”
Yes, because if somebody tries to hack your computer, the dog can go into the Internet and bite that person. Everyone knows that.
Let’s not forget the time CNN said that the Space Shuttle travels at 18 times the speed of light.
That’s nothing! Thats just over warp 2!
1 - The Classics are the literature of the era.
2 - Mis-founded is not a word
It’s formed in a regular compositional way by adding a prefix to another word. Dictionaries don’t bother to separately list every word of this variety (there are infinitely many of them out there…). As it happens, “mis-founded” does not seem to be in very common use, but it doesn’t strike me as a particularly silly thing to say.
Maybe she was afraid they’d get her street address and then come to rob her.
Besides, having a dog to pet can calm you down.
Mis-founded
I guess it’s one of those things where it’s only funny if you were expecting to hear a different word. I personally was rolling on the floor afterwards. It also strikes me as something President Bush would be ridiculed for saying.
One of my favorites ever was this from CNN’s ticker in the runup to the '04 election: PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER
I swear, years ago, I heard “if the founding fathers were alive today, they’d be turning over in their graves.”
That’s almost worthy of Berra.
TV blurb for a story about hunting for Osama bin Laden: “Where’s Obama?”
After the Northridge earthquake in 1994 I saw a televised press conference in which a geologist with the USGS explained that the quake had been caused by a previously unknown fault. A reported asked him, “How many previously unknown earthquake faults are there?”
BBC World News 5/25/2008 7:53 pm
“How long will the Phoenix Lander actually stay on Mars?”
“Well… Uh… it will stay there forever…”
I smirked at this one, but it’s not terrible, since one could charitably read it as “how many earthquakes are caused along unknown (rather than known) faults.”
Who can forget Dan Rather going completely bonkers during the 2000 election?
