Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
Discreet vs Discrete used to crack me up on dating sites. All those guys looking for discrete hookups - which kind of makes sense but I am sure is not what they meant.
I literally ground my teeth today because I got an email from a customer service person saying “You’re package was returned to us”. Not a phishing email with an intentional misspelling, a legitimate email for a real order I made. If it is your JOB to send messages like this they ought not have misspellings.
So the context matters to me. I am more tolerant of spelling errors and mis-phrasing in everyday life than in a professional communication.
they ought not have misspellings
Wouldn’t it be “ought not to”?
Why no! In the negative (ought not) you don’t need the to.
Neat. That gives me old British author vibes
To my ears it sounds weird without the “to”, but so does “fraught” instead of “fraught with [something]”, which is now common-ish.
Interchangeable then/than, or using ‘on accident’.
Big 🤡 energy.
What’s wrong with the ladder?
The wrungs are broken.
Surely there not all broken?
Their seriously broken, and don’t call me Shirley.
Idk, try the stairs instead.
I’m glad some people got my joke, but seriously, what is wrong with “on accident”?
I love when people try to justify all the preposition use in grammar, like we don’t have countless examples of it being completely arbitrary. Like why don’t we “watch at” a movie like we look at a painting, much like listen to vs hear. Or why do verbs with similar meanings take different prepositions, like decide on vs opt for (vs choose without a prep).
If it’s commonly used one way, then using it another way carries another meaning.
If you normally “watch” a movie, then “watching at a movie” implies some more distance, detachment, like you’re pointed in the direction of the movie instead of the substance.
It’s these little things that can make language so fun to use creatively, but also really hard to learn as a second language. Because you can’t just learn a rule of usage, you have to learn the rule and then encounter and remember all the common exceptions.
Well I find it useful to think of “by accident” as the equivalent to “by way of an accident” the accident was the way that the thing happened; there is a causal relationship there. Compare that with “On accident”, well, what does it mean to be on an accident? It sounds like a great way to get your shoes dirty.
*latter
Coming from the other direction - when someone ackshullys a parson, but the person was using the phrase correctly.
I had to explain to someone online today that “liminal space” had multiple meanings, and it didn’t only refer to spaces you transition through, and the spooky “liminal space aesthetic” is a valid and coherent use of the word “liminal” and the term “liminal space”
Oh my goodness, someone pointed this out on Tumblr years ago, but it desperately needs repeating:
Dear English Language Fanfic Writers,
-
Wanton: an unrestrained desire, usually of a sexual nature.
-
Wonton: a type of dumpling found in Chinese and East Asian cuisine.
I wanton for wontons
-
“Its”
As “its” is used to indicate possession by “it”, “its” is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.
“It’s”, used as either the contractive form or the possessive form, does not require such an exception. The distinction between the contractive and possessive forms of “it’s” rarely/never introduces ambiguity; the distinction is clear from context.
The word “its” should be deprecated.
Or people could just get it right. It’s really not that hard.
Found the English teacher.
Ha 😁
I have a much better plan: deprecate the stupid apostrophe for all possessives! It always looks semi-illiterate to me, like the 15th-century Dutch printsetters weren’t hot on English grammar (not sure, but I bet this is in fact how it happened - German possessives manage fine without the apostrophe).
In other news, the possessive apostrophe is now allowed as part of a name (Rita’s Restaurant) in German…
Yes I heard about that! The illogical abomination that is English spelling and grammar is going to destroy the world’s languages one by one!
As “its” is used to indicate possession by “it”, “its” is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.
Most, if not all, pronouns work that way though.
“The man’s arm” becomes “his arm” not “him’s arm”. “The woman’s arm” becomes “her arm” not “her’s arm”. Similarly, “the robot’s arm” becomes “its arm” not “it’s arm”.
I don’t really care if people use “it’s” instead of “its” , but I don’t think it’s a unique exception. The only thing that’s unique is that it is pronounced the same way as if you tacked an apostrophe and an s on the end. If we used the word “hims” instead of “his”, I’m sure people would start putting an apostrophe in there too.
“The man’s arm” becomes “his arm” not “him’s arm”.
Similarly, “the robot’s arm” becomes “its arm” not “it’s arm”
But, “the man” you referred to does not become “hi”. “The robot” you mentioned does become “it”.
Right, and for pronouns you don’t just put apostrophe s after. So you don’t make “it” possessive by adding apostrophe s just like you don’t add apostrophe s to “he” or “him” to make it possessive.
If you treat the pronoun “it” like a regular (non-pronoun) noun instead of like other pronouns, that is itself an exception.
If “it” is actually the subject then it would not be a contradiction.
But when “it” is a pronoun for something else (which is definitely at least 99.9% of the time.
Those mis-stated phrases are called eggcorns. They’re a fascinating contributor to the evolution of language.
The term egg corn (later contracted into one word, eggcorn) was coined by professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003 in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a group blog for linguists.[5] In his article, Liberman discussed the case of a woman who had used the phrase egg corn for acorn, and he noted that this specific type of substitution lacked a name. Pullum suggested using egg corn itself as a label.[6]
There’s a video on it! https://youtu.be/F12LSAbos7A?si=487JdO6MRnLDWFp-
Ah! I’ll read this over dinner.
Bone apple tea! :p
“Touch base”
No, you cannot touch base with me; I’m not into that. Go touch your own base, base toucher.
The idiom relies on a person being familiar with baseball, but even then it makes very little contextual sense.
Oh, baseball! That makes much more sense.
For some reason I had assumed it came from tabletop gaming, where your model’s base much touch another player’s base in order to whisper to them
Lol, tabletop gaming is far too niche to be the progenitor of so widespread a term
It makes total sense if you are familiar with baseball.
Touching base is something you need to be sure you do. Not only while running bases, but also when tagging up after a dead ball or a caught fly.
It happens regularly and, therefore, it is generally nonchalant. But it must be done; it must be remembered and kept up with.
No, it makes little literal sense. How much sense it makes contextually depends on the usage.
Good touch or bad touch?
In German:
- “Je X, je Y.”
statt eines davon
- “Je X, desto Y.”
- “Je X, umso Y.”
“Could of…”
It’s “could have”!
Edit: I’m referring to text based things, like text and email. I can pretty much ignore the mispronouncing.
It’s definitely a mistake, but I think it has slipped by because spell check wouldn’t have a reason to mark it, and not everyone uses grammar check, so they think it’s correct to spell it out by the sound of the contraction.
I think they just heard could’ve or meant to say could’ve
It’s very much not recommended, and generally seen as an error. But this article puts an asterisk on it.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-worse-than-coulda
I am viscerally against this concept.
It’s one thing to include the spelling as a way to capture the phonetics of an accent or a dialect, entirely another to accept its use in writing when using a neutral voice.
If anything, because it’s so often just a misspelling I would avoid trying to use it as a phonetics thing just as a matter of style. At this point everybody would think I’m making a mistake instead of trying to mimic a way of speech in a way they’d never do with “coulda”.
With you on all counts.
I mean no? The have in could have is pronounced the same as of, but at least AFAIK no dialect explicitly says could of. Tell the other person to not mesh the two words together and they’ll say have. I think.
Minor nit pick from my experience. If the word is written out “could have” I enunciate the entire word. I only pronounce the contraction “could’ve” as “could of”. And vice versa when dictating.
Not when written
Irregardless is just a synonym for Regardless now and I staunchly oppose anyone who tries to correct it.
“Flammable” and “Inflammable” are synonymous, so…
“Literally” and “literally” are antonyms.
Thank you, satan.
I always think of that one in the same sense of famous and infamous. My brain accepts that only as inflammable things are REALLY flammable.
And even then my brain needs a second to recover from the 180 I mentally have to do to make that make sense.
Yeah but “irregardless” is like “un-non-flammable”
How about “irregardful”?
I like it. Not unbad at all.
You should only use the weird in its full context:
Not without a lack of disregard
Worst Case Ontario
Haahahhaahahhahahahahaahaah
Reminds me of “Worse case scenario”
Worser cast scenario.
Get two birds stoned at once!
I learned recently that I was using the word “hydroscopic” incorrectly to describe something that repels water. A hydroscope is a device to observe things under water.
Hydrophobic is what I was looking for.
I only realized I had been using the term incorrectly when I got into 3D printing and learned all about the hygroscopic filaments involved lol. I had and epiphany and realized the mistake I had been making for my entire life. And nobody corrected me!
I feel like everyone in the 3d printing community says this wrong. Not sure where it originated.
I mean I can’t speak for everyone but hydroscopic sounds more related to water retention than hygroscopic does.
“Chomping at the bit”. It’s champing at the bit. Horses champ.
“Get ahold of”. It’s “get hold of” or, if you must, “get a hold of”
“I’m doing good”. No, Superman does good. You’re doing well.
“Chomping at the bit”. It’s champing at the bit. Horses champ.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this one! Good job to you and this thread!
My favorite of these mnemonics (try spelling that from memory) for these arbitrary distinctions was in a movie that had some evil lords in it. The father way telling the son,
“Pheasants are hung, peasants are hanged.”
On accident, it is by accident. 🤬
Niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch
Neesh is actually the much newer pronunciation apparently, TIL.
What do you base that on?
According to the pronunciations on Wiktionary, nitch is Californian\NICH\ is the more common one and the older of the two pronunciations. It is the only pronunciation given for the word in all English dictionaries until the 20th century, when \NEESH\ was first listed as a pronunciation variant in Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917). \NEESH\ wasn’t listed as a pronunciation in our dictionaries until our 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and it wasn’t entered into our smaller Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary until 1993. Even then, it was marked in the Collegiate as a pronunciation that was in educated use but not considered acceptable until 2003.
It’s confusing because the way it’s spelled makes it look French, so if you read it in a book and didn’t hear other people say it, you might think it was “Neech” if you know French also.
Just like “voila” you might think is said the French way, like it’s spelled, but a lot of English speakers say “walla”.
Just like “voila” you might think is said the French way, like it’s spelled, but a lot of English speakers say “walla”.
Ugh, I can’t agree with this one. I think a lot of English speakers say “walla” because they think it’s spelled “walla”.
Wat
I subscribe to the view that people mispronouncing things have read more stuff rather than heard things, so of course I’m not looking down on them for that. I didn’t realize until recently that quinoa wasn’t kwin-OH-ah for awhile, or even in my youthful fondness for Greek myths that the goddess wasn’t called ah-fro-DAIT.
Another big one is “conscience”. How could that be read as anything but “con science?”
English pronunciation is completely all over the place, so much so that you frequently cannot predict how a word is supposed to be pronounced. I usually don’t pay too much attention to pronunciation errors because of that.
I heard Nice things about France
I heard things about niche, France.
I’ve heard this one like 3 times in the last month on youtube and it bothers me a lot
Depends on the context IMO
I suppose, if the context is if you prefer to be correct or not?
Lol “being correct” in a language. Take a course in linguistics.
How
If I had to take a guess I would venture that this person says “It’s not my nitch.” and “wow that product is very neesh.”
I swear I’ve met someone like this now that I think about it
You got it, dialects are a widely varying thing!
You should google the word “dialect” and see where it takes you.
To search results about the word dialect
You were supposed to keep clicking.
Instructions unclear. Am now enrolled in a course on pronunciation
It’s a start. Hopefully it’s not for Vietnamese.
