I thought that the term came from ballet.
Quite right. This is the new part of the problem, ‘muscle memory’ from years of typing. My fingers produce words that don’t correspond with my thoughts. ‘Any’ is likely to come out ‘and’, the ‘there’, ‘they’re’, and ‘their’ get mixed up by my fingers even though I’m aware of which one should be used. It’s time to have all homophones use the same spelling. Not really, but it would solve the simple problems. In the case above, my fingers went for the and despite trying to output the typically wrong phrase. It was easier when I ignored caps and didn’t care about spelling and just let people complain.
We’re gonna TOW you for that.
Tow the lion.
Thank you for this thread.
It’s MOOT point, not MUTE point.
It’s PEDAL to the METAL, not PETAL to the MEDAL. (Unless you’re throwing roses at someone’s Pulitzer… and I believe that is illegal in several Southern states.)
It’s SOPHOMORE, not SOTH’MORE.
I feel better.
I don’t; I’m still peeved. Cromulent peeves me too; I’ve never really believed in that word.
Except for the fact that you don’t tow a line. You tow something with the line, maybe, but you aren’t towing the line.
I don’t see how you can tow something with a line, without towing the line as well.
I once replied to a post that I liked with the words: Hear Hear! only to get a response of
it’s here here, you moron.
One I think a few people get wrong is “Present company excepted.” I’ve seen professional publications print it as “Present company accepted” which really means the complete opposite.
Another one we’ll be seeing in a couple of months is "earned a birth." I once challenged someone on this and it was explained as a team being “reborn” in the post-season. :smack:
Wouldn’t you be towing the barge in that case?
The phrase was used in essentially the same manner when I was in Army basic training.
Who can resist a toe-headed child?
I could care less about this.
Serious addition to the thread. Over here in the Pit, someone uses the term “cow towing” in the context of deferring to another person.
The word is “kowtow,” it’s Chinese, and it’s a single word.
“Cow towing” means to drag cattle by a rope, line, or cable. This is Not Recommended, as cattle are awful performers at towed-platform stunts. The preferred method is to load cattle into a cattle car, then tow the car.
That might have been the idea behind this album cover.
It looks like a thumb to me but I like the special affect.
They look like thumbs to me, too–the band’s name is Toe Fat, so who knows?
My teachers told us about school in Indiana’s pioneer days. When the teacher asked a question, the student had to come to the front of the room to answer, standing with his toes on the chalk line. In good weather, most of the kids walked to school barefoot, so they literally toed the line.