I’m a little surprised I’m the first to bring this up.
When you form the past tense of the infinitive to lead it changes spelling and pronunciation to led. More and more lately, I see people taking their cue from to read and changing only the pronunciation. I hate that!
I know led looks wrong. But it’s right.
stuyguy:
Of course! I’ll take any microbrewed stout.
But please don’t call me “sir.” I work for a living.
This particular word was mentioned already… but how it’s pronounced is a different matter… This is the only word that I will turn around and correct a total stranger if I hear them say it wrong…
Neanderthal… you don’t pronounce the ‘th’ as in ‘the’… it’s pronounced neander-tal. Hello! They even changed the english spelling to “neandertal” to stop people from saying the ‘th’! Get a grip!
rant done.
-nigel
Oops, dear friends, I see you have been talking about me behind my back. Or in front of my face, I guess. I stand corrected, and will try to modify my spelling of alot…ahem…a lot!
:o
I, for one, beleive very strongly in something I call, **Better Living Through Cliches ** It it my firm beleif that one well done cliche will get you out of just about any jam. There is a cliche for every possible situation in life. I’m am not sure if there is a God, but of this, I am very certain.
I’ve shared my philosophy with a few close friends ( and now all of you here.) and those that have come into the fold are in the light now and as happy as a lark for listening to such sage advice.
I have always wanted to write the definitive book on cliches and how to use them to get out of ever possible situation from work, to arguments to long winded blowhards that just suck the life out of you.
Damn good question!
My friends overseas all pronounce it Kyoopon.
Everyone I know here in Michigan says “coo -pon”
It’s a conundrum.
It is Kmart or Meijer.
Not Kmarts or Meijers. Jiminey Cricket!
I try my best to eradicate this blunder by gritting my teeth and stating firmly, " Unless you went to two stores by the name of Kmart today then it is Kmart. NOT Kmarts.Sears is correct. Montgomery Wards is correct. But, stop calling it KMARTSand MEIJERS"
“No holes barred”
OK, now we know your sexual habits, but that’s not the word to be used in a no-holds-barred argument.
It is against the law in the State of Georgia to say this cliche.
Cliches are useful and clear, which is why they tend to survive. But un-thought-through cliches are also the leading cause of mixed metaphors, which makes them a mixed blessing, or a doubled-edged sword, or something like that.
On the cliche front, however, there is one that consistently irritates me: “one fell swoop” used as though it meant simply “all at once.” The cliche arises from MacDuff’s remark on learning of the murder of his family in “Macbeth”: “All my pretty chickens and their dam, in one fell swoop.” “Fell” was then (and still occasionally is) an adjective meaning “evil” with overtones of “disastrous.” So a remark like “Well, we got all those letters out in one fell swoop” makes no sense unless your letters are very sinister indeed.
::slinks off in shame::
My roommate in my freshman year of college started almost every sentence with “actually,” so I can understand why you’d be annoyed. I was ready to pull my hair out by the end of the first semester. I was ready to pull her hair out by the end of the second semester.
I’m coming in late here, but I’ll post this anyway …
Stuyguy, I checked “entitled” in my dictionary (Random House Webster’s Dictionary, second edition) and the second definition does say “to call by a title or a name.” I was referring to the AP Style Guide when I posted and, I admit, I never looked in the dictionary. So I guess it depends on which one you use as a source.
Just so you know, I wasn’t suggesting that we discard a valid meaning or that the AP Style Guide is always right. With all of the emphasis my professors put on learning the uses of certain words (you learn pretty quickly when you get between five and 50 points deducted for each error), I didn’t realize that it was acceptable to use “entitle” in that way. However, I’ll still have to fight the urge to take out my red pencil and correct it when I see it.
Dammit! I just checked the dictionary for “adviser” and it says both spellings are acceptable. That’s it – I’m going over to the journalism building right now and demanding ten points back on that editing quiz. Who cares if I took it in 1996? 
Let me know if we ever get that “coupon” thing settled. My mom and I are still debating the pronunciation.
I have always been annoyed by people using “bring” and “take” interchangeably. (Previous word looks wrong, but is spelled correctly according to my dictionary. Go figure.)
I bring, you take. Simple, non? “I will bring BBQ pork to your party.” “Will you take BBQ pork to the party?” “Please take BBQ pork to the party-” “Will you please bring BBQ pork to my party?”
I HATE it when someone says something along the lines of “Bring this to your dad, please?”
Of course, as I found out when I checked the good old dictionary for irregardless, which was NOT a word 20 years ago-as previously stated, it is a double negative and is NOT a word if you want to be a purist- BRING and TAKE have now mutated into the same definition in the dictionary.
So, I guess I am now wrong once again. And I will have to stop grinding my teeth when I hear it. Easier said than done.
My other pet peeve has already been mentioned, it is the misuse of “seen” and “saw.” So far, I am still allowed to grind my teeth when I hear this one.
Given the way things are going, I expect it will be proper to use them interchangeably any day now.
Daniel Webster must be rotating in his grave pretty much non-stop.
Scotti
Well, having scanned the Thread, I find that all of my favorite agravations have been covered except one and it’s minor.
It’s all of those esoteric acronyms that I can’t figure out. While they don’t exactly drive me up the wall, they will often cause me to move on to something else.
IMTTIW
I can’t stand when people use the word “ground” in place of “floor” when referring to something that fell. Floor = indoors; ground = outdoors.
Sorry Filthy, but “aggravate” is not synonymous with “annoy”. A bad situation or an unpleasant disease can be aggravated, i.e. something already considered bad can become worse or can be made worse.
My guess is that he had the same problem I’ve had - he learned the word when reading and hasn’t learned to pronounce it.
A great deal of mine came from extensive reading at an early age. I learned lots of vocabulary that wasn’t generally used in conversation with kids, so I didn’t hear them pronounced. Since I was too lazy to get up and go to the dictionary every time I came across a word I didn’t recognize, I learned them through context and made up my own pronunciation based on appearance. Once you’ve gotten a pronunciation stuck in your head, it can be hard to remember the real one.
I will admit that ‘muh CAB’ (sorry, closest I can get) sounds more gruesome than ‘MACK a bray’ and I say it correctly (altho I sometimes mispronounce it mentally when reading).
But I still often get ‘shellac’ wrong.
And my favorite was just a couple of years ago, when I discovered that the game ‘pih NOH cul’ that I’d read about for years was ACTUALLY the game ‘PEA-knuckle’ that I’d been hearing about for years!
<hijack>
I’ll never forget my humiliation when I stood up in 8th grade to read “The Ancient Mariner” and pronounced it
“Ma-REEN-er”. One time while watching Jeopardy I said the answer was Doo-AH-de-num, when the correct pronunciation is Doo-o-DEE-num (duodenum). I do this a lot, because some words you just don’t hear in conversation or on TV. It always surprises me when I hear the correct pronunciation, and like you said it’s hard to use the correct one.
<hijack>
Another PP of mine is usage of “lay” and “lie”. When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother drilled these into my head, and now to hear “I’m gonna go lay down” grates on my nerves.
Celyn
Member
Sorry Filthy, but “aggravate” is not synonymous with “annoy”. A bad situation or an unpleasant disease can be aggravated, i.e. something already considered bad can become worse or can be made worse.
As a retired, old fart who is planning to return to school, I find this thread great.
The first courses I’ll be takeing are Algebra for Idiots and a sort of Remedial English.
This happened to me, too. For the longest time, I thought the word gesture was pronounced with a g (as in go).
Also:
unbeknownst = unbeKOWnst
hors d’oeuvres = whores doevras
macabre = maKAYber