The only thing I can think of right off needs explanation (I suspect) but I’ll try it without the explanation to see if it really qualifies. A work-buddy I used to play chess with would find an occasion in almost every game of referring to one of my moves in a disparaging way. He’d say, “That’s not cultured.”
I was watching “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where one of the women was saying she needed to go get a mole checked out and the doctor decided to do a * Beebobsey* on it.
I worked at a company where one of the higher-muckitys claimed the company had “made a conscience decision” to do something. Probably had something to do with the layoffs we were going through.
My dad was a minister and a fisherman and I’ll never forget the Sunday where he told a long anecdote in his sermon about a trip where they caught something really big and had trouble landing it. Whatever it was was so heavy that it required “three men and a wench” to get it into the boat. This was repeated several times. Half the congregation was practically in tears trying not to lose it.
My friends dad likes to say ‘prior before’. Like, he drives a truck now, but prior before that, he drove a Mustang.
A neighbor was pissed that his daughter got in trouble in school for missing class too many times (she is around 12). He received a letter explaining how the school was wokring aggressively to thwart juvenile delinquency. He walked around pissed, venting outside and to me, telling me and a friend that he can’t believe his daughter is a juvenile.
“I can’t believe my daughter is a juvenile. I can’t believe my daughter is a juvenile.”
I never even considered that! Imagine a tacky chess move. Ugly I could understand, but tacky? Offensive? Vile? Horrid? I guess I may have judged him too soon.
How true. He had other botched expressions, too, but I’m having trouble recalling any as good as the cultured thing. I still believe my favorite is “mute point” which many acquaintances prefer to say, even those who ought to know better.
I still remember when we were teenagers and my sister’s friend Anne was frighteningly naive. We were watching the Smothers Brothers show, and Tommy described how he’d been at this nice wedding, and after the ceremony everyone went up to the conception room.
We all laughed – except for Anne, who was sitting there with a puzzled look on her face. My sister asked her, “You do know what ‘conception’ means, don’t you?” Anne thought hard for a moment and then replied, “Is it something you do in church?”
