Irksome solecisms

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  • Thanks you, @Sparrow, you made me laugh!
  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    Similarly "go get" as in "let's go get a takeaway" rather than "go and get". I think that one is a difference between US and UK usage which has crossed the pond.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    This may have been mentioned before, but 'bored of' always sets my teeth on edge. Tired of, yes, but 'bored by'. And use of 'of' for 'have' in print, to represent sloppy pronunciation. 'You should of' - ugh.
  • Sparrow wrote: »
    Similarly "go get" as in "let's go get a takeaway" rather than "go and get". I think that one is a difference between US and UK usage which has crossed the pond.
    Except in the US, it would be “let’s go get takeout,” not “let’s go get a takeaway.”

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited February 4
    Even better was a film (I think made for ATS recruits) about the dangers of contracting anti-social diseases which didn't mention intercourse or sex.

    Surely social rather than anti-social, as in the young lady called Ellen, who was really extraordinary willing -
    In her efforts to please
    She spread a social disease
    From New York to the Straits of Magellan.

  • Days of the weeks have been used adverbially like that, either singular or plural, for ages. It's no new thing.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Is it a growing habit or just sloppy sub-editing that little words like "of" or "to" are disappearing from our media reports? A couple of examples from a report by one of our most respected newspaper's Washington correspondent which I've just read:
    Democrats are continuing to seek the removal Greene from her position
    many the party’s corporate donors
    These are just the most recent examples.
    It's more likely to be because those are all legitimate words. So, a spell-checker won't pick them up.

    They've laid off a metric fuckton of proofreaders. A computer program doesn't get the job done.
  • And we're all just learning to live with a lower level of literacy.
  • I hope this particular annoyance hasn't already been mentioned. My sincerest apologies if it has.

    "That being said" is a current overused phrase that has me grinding my teeth.

    Last night I watched a YouTube video from a man who looks for deals at major chain stores. In the eleven minute video, he used "that being said" seven times. That was six more times than was necessary.
  • Poor, poor "however". We may never hear your dulcet tones again.
  • "At this moment in time" 😡 .
    "Take ownership of" instead of be responsible for is another.
  • Take ownership means official responsibility is passing from one person or department to another. It's more than just "be responsible for".
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    ‘Totes’ - the shortened version of ‘totally’ gets on my nerves.
  • We sometimes talk to each other in totes language, thus, totes, whatevs, ridic, bro, obvs, fam. I blame the lockdown.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Is it a growing habit or just sloppy sub-editing that little words like "of" or "to" are disappearing from our media reports? A couple of examples from a report by one of our most respected newspaper's Washington correspondent which I've just read:
    Democrats are continuing to seek the removal Greene from her position
    many the party’s corporate donors
    These are just the most recent examples.
    It's more likely to be because those are all legitimate words. So, a spell-checker won't pick them up.

    They've laid off a metric fuckton of proofreaders. A computer program doesn't get the job done.

    A few years ago I wrote to the Glasgow Herald Diary page to draw their attention to a funny proofreading lapse, and got a reply saying, "All the people who actually care about this have been laid off."
  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    Is it a growing habit or just sloppy sub-editing that little words like "of" or "to" are disappearing from our media reports? A couple of examples from a report by one of our most respected newspaper's Washington correspondent which I've just read:
    Democrats are continuing to seek the removal Greene from her position
    many the party’s corporate donors
    These are just the most recent examples.
    It's more likely to be because those are all legitimate words. So, a spell-checker won't pick them up.

    They've laid off a metric fuckton of proofreaders. A computer program doesn't get the job done.

    A few years ago I wrote to the Glasgow Herald Diary page to draw their attention to a funny proofreading lapse, and got a reply saying, "All the people who actually care about this have been laid off."

    I hope you replied "This person who does care will no longer be buying your paper."
  • The person who gave the reply you quote was probably about to be laid off.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    The person who gave the reply you quote was probably about to be laid off.

    Quite likely.

    Did I mention I was one of those? (in a roughly similar situation)
  • Ray SunshineRay Sunshine Shipmate
    edited February 18
    BroJames wrote: »
    ‘May’ instead of ‘might’. “If he hadn’t dropped his hairdryer in the bath he may still be alive.”

    Back in the early 2000s, the BBC, no less, informed us that "Germany may have won the war."
  • Gill HGill H Shipmate
    Having just signed up for the CoE ‘Live Lent’ devotions, I was alarmed to receive an email telling me about a series of videos headed:

    “How do Christian’s live out their faith today?”

    Is this part of my Lenten penance? Torture by typo?
  • BroJames wrote: »
    ‘May’ instead of ‘might’. “If he hadn’t dropped his hairdryer in the bath he may still be alive.”

    Back in the early 2000s, the BBC, no less, informed us that "Germany may have won the war."

    "He may still be alive" means we're not sure, but it's possible we will find him alive (when we open the door / find him in the woods / whatever).
  • What drives me freaking nuts is the reduplication of "would have" in sentences like this: "If he would have gone to the market, he would have had had plenty of peanuts on hand." No, no, no! "If he HAD gone... he would have..." Much cleaner and easier to understand. But ten to one, the person I'm listening to is going to use the double "would have" formation.Which is just clunky and sounds wrong to me as well.
  • I think tense is affecting may/might. "He may be alive", is present tense, but to put it in the past would produce different sentences, e.g., "He might been alive". The cited sentence, "Germany may have won the war", sounds odd. More likely is, "could have won the war".
  • Tense does play into it, though I can't put my finger on exactly how. "Germany may have won the war" is a statement in the perfect, but "may" means the matter is not yet settled. "Germany might have won the war" is also a statement in the perfect, but it is a statement contrary-to-fact, and is probably introducing someone's historical speculation, like this: "... if only they hadn't been such idiots as to run off some of their best scientists."
  • From memory, I think it was in the mid-nineties that the "may"/"might" reversal first came into widespread use. I can't be certain after so many years, but I have an idea the "Johnson" column in The Economist mentioned it around then.
  • cgichardcgichard Shipmate
    edited February 19
    Does "That might be so" express more doubt than "That may be so"?

    On another tack, I'm not happy with the new use of "they": A woman is missing from the quarantine hotel. They may hae gone out for a smoke.

    To me, this sounds as if there must have been others besides the woman specifically mentioned.
  • It is, of course, being used to avoid the use of a gendered personal pronoun (which seems silly if "a woman" has already been referenced).

    I don't have a problem with it unless it leads to ambiguity: "A woman is missing from the tour group. They'd gone to the beach". So had the woman or the whole group gone bathing?
  • which seems silly if "a woman" has already been referenced.
    As was indeed the case.
  • Heard yesterday on BBC Radio 4: 'This year, William and Harry will be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their mother's death'.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    Heard yesterday on BBC Radio 4: 'This year, William and Harry will be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their mother's death'.
    Interesting “celebration,” since come September it will only have been 24 years since her death.

  • @Lamb Chopped "Germany might have won the war..." I think of being a subjunctive preterite.
  • It was a friend of Harry being interviewed. He may have miscounted, or I may have mis-heard. Either way, it was definitely 'celebrated'.
  • My son picked-up on that - his response was unprintable!
  • From M-W, only one of the senses (in italics) indicates jollity of any degree. The rest are consistent with solemnness.

    1: to perform (a sacrament or solemn ceremony) publicly and with appropriate rites : solemnize
    <celebrate the mass>
    <celebrate a marriage>
    2a: to honor (as a holy day or feast day) by conducting or engaging in religious, commemorative, or other solemn ceremonies or by refraining from ordinary business
    b: to demonstrate grateful and happy satisfaction in (as an anniversary or event) by engaging in festivities, indulgence, merrymaking, or other similar deviation from accustomed routine
    3: to proclaim or broadcast for the attention of a wide public
    4a: to portray with a high valuation and usually in enhanced or poetic form or in exalted interpretation in a way to contribute to public awareness, edification, or enjoyment : hold up or play up for public acclaim or homage : extol, glorify
    b: to commemorate in appreciative interpretation for posterity especially in some literary or art form
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited February 21
    mousethief wrote: »
    From M-W, only one of the senses (in italics) indicates jollity of any degree. The rest are consistent with solemnness. . . .
    True, but I think the vast majority of English speakers, at least where I live, would hear the phrase “celebrate the anniversary of” as clearly conveying the idea of happy festivities. If that’s not what’s intended, I think most would opt for “observe” or “mark the anniversary of.”

    One could look at it this way: Take out “the anniversary of” and you’re left with “will celebrate their mother’s death.” That surely sounds . . . odd.

  • Oh! How the world has worsened.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Celebrate as rejoice over is what C.S. Lewis would call the dangerous sense (the meaning a modern English speaker will assume on encountering the word without sufficient context).
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    From M-W, only one of the senses (in italics) indicates jollity of any degree. The rest are consistent with solemnness. ....
    What, apart from Mystery Worshipper which doesn't make sense in this context, does M-W stand for please?

  • @Enoch , probably Miriam-Webster, the dictionary company.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    NicoleMR wrote: »
    @Enoch , probably Miriam-Webster, the dictionary company.
    Ah. Thank you. That one's not that well known here. It's usually the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that people cite here.

  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
  • Enoch wrote: »
    NicoleMR wrote: »
    @Enoch , probably Miriam-Webster, the dictionary company.
    Ah. Thank you. That one's not that well known here. It's usually the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that people cite here.

    Never Collins? It's supposedly the best-selling dictionary in the UK.
  • My Collins dictionaries are all foreign language dictionaries (e. g. French-English, German-English, the front half translates in one direction, the back the other), so I'm not surprised they are the biggest sellers.

    The dictionaries used to look up words are the OED, the definitive word collecting and descriptor of origins dictionary, all in navy, or in my world, Chambers, which before the internet was the Scrabble and Crossword dictionary and is red.

    The full OED is multi-volume series of books, so most people have the Shorter OED as a book, or one of the other variants. It was the loss of words in the Oxford Junior Dictionary that triggered the The Lost Words book and projects
  • Addendum, Collins publish the sort of miniature dictionaries school children carry/carried.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    The full OED is also printed in a compact edition which comes as one or two volumes and is supplied with a magnifying glass to read the photographically reduced pages.
  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    "Look it up in your Funk & Wagnall's!"
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