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Heaven: English language
Does anyone have favorite pet peeves about usage? I have a list of my own, including lay vs. lie, persuade vs. convince, can vs. may and the declining use of the subjunctive. (I am especially irritated by "I wish I would have known such-and-such back then", in which the speaker is insulting himself, saying he made a conscious decision in the past not to know something.) I also dislike the modern hasty tendency to shorten words, often omitting multiple syllables.
I am posting this in Heaven as I hope to avoid rancor. People are not all identically educated, and language is expected to and does change over time. My own use of English is undoubtedly imperfect. What sets your teeth on edge when you hear it?
I am posting this in Heaven as I hope to avoid rancor. People are not all identically educated, and language is expected to and does change over time. My own use of English is undoubtedly imperfect. What sets your teeth on edge when you hear it?
Comments
Or do you mean “dorm” instead of “dormitory,” “fridge” instead of “refrigerator,” or “phone” instead of “telephone”? (Not that I think that’s a particularly new thing either.)
My kids have put up for years with me saying “I think you mean nauseated” when they’d say some “feels/felt nauseous.” I was wasting my time.
It also always sounds really strange to me when someone calls the basin in the bathroom in which one washes one’s hand a “sink.” I was taught that things (like dishes, pots and pans) are washed in a sink, while hands are washed in a lavatory.
And of course, the word itself derives from washing, but for some reason here it's been detached from that. I can't tell you when that happened.
I also dislike the decline of the familiar second person.
And pedantically, if something is increasing in a linear fashion then it should not be called exponential.
And I may change or develope, but I do not evolve.
For example, when a child was found wandering near a railway crossing: "She may have been killed." Well, was she kileed or not?
While "She might have been killed" expresses the anxiety about her safety far more clearly.
[N.B. When the sex of the child is known, I do not say 'they' as the specific situation conecerns only one child - but that has received extensive discussion already elsewhere on the Ship.]
Lay/lie is another bugbear. Surprisingly many people, even those I consider educated, use these verbs correctly..
I can tell you a story - though it probably belongs in the railways thread. I remember hearing, years ago, that when conveniences (for want of a better word given how many times I'm going to have to write all the others potentially) were first fitted to railway carriages, they had two distinct rooms, one for the appliance and one for the sink, the doors to which were labelled toilet and lavatory.
Eventually it was realised that space could be saved by only having one room, and given the need to wash hands without necessarily having used the toilet was ongoing (i.e., some people might just be looking for the sink, whereas everyone using the toilet would also need the sink), the single remaining room was still labelled lavatory. Over time, people forgot which one they were talking about, and lavatory became the appliance.
And don't start me on legal terminology.
I like snown/snew for snowed.
Beg to differ ( as an Antipodean). The British infinitive “to sneak” was a synonym with the American “ to snitch” ( i.e. inform on, tattle on). Curiously the Australian synonym was “ to pimp( on)” which appears to have gone out of popular use ( I recall it from 60 years ago)
The past tense of” sneak= snuck” was definitely in use here in Oz by the middle 60s. I do not ever recall “ sneak= tattler” or the verb in popular use here or anywhere outside of Britain.
Primary meaning of "sneak" in the UK is to act stealthily. "He snuck ( ) out of the nave during the sermon hoping no-one would notice"
The past tense/participle "snuck" would sound a bit weirder where it means "snitch", at least to my ears. I'd expect "sneaked" there.
I have been known to use "squoze" for what I did to those oranges to make juice.
Very British
and above all, one I've gone on about on these boards many times,
I don't feel that strongly about 'snuck' or for that matter 'dove'. They're just forms found in a different dialect to mine.
OK, it may be my social work training, but I was taught that “reflecting “ was a very different thing, imagining yourself in a particular situation.
As in : He was like "what are you doing?"
But it is so infectious and I catch myself throwing a random "like" into a sentence when it shouldn't be there.
Regional variations perhaps? Pond difference?
To quote from two songs...
"I dreamed a dream in time gone by"
"I learned that Washington never told a lie"
And I'm racking my brains for a lyric from the wonderful little musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" but nothing's coming to me at the moment.
I heard two different people, some weeks ago, both saying that the situation had been "exasperated" by Covid - possibly true, but not what they meant!
And one common mistake: "It would be impossible to under-estimate Bob's influence ...". Really?
In this sentence, is the speaker trying to say that Bob is NOT influential? Because that works, in the same sense as "It would be impossible to overestimate Mayor Graftbag's sleaziness" works to say Mayor Graftbag is sleazy, ie. Graftbag is so sleazy, no estimate you give of his sleaziness will be an exaggeration.
Or, is the person trying to say that Bob is very influential, and thinks his sentence means something like "We should not underestimate his influence?" Because, yeah, that contradicts the intended meaning.
There's a whole bunch of markers for people who are just mimicking sounds without thinking about what the words mean - "for all intensive purposes" and the like, but those don't really irritate - just mark a lack of thought.
Things that do set my teeth on edge are more or less every use of words like "synergy" and "leverage".
And when people say "many" when what they actually mean is "not very many at all, but some, but I'm going to try and make this sound like it affects more people than it does, because it's important to me".
If your niche political party attracts 3% of the total vote, you do not have "many" supporters.
The distinction between anticipating something and expecting something seems to be dead entirely which is a pity.
People asking, for yourself, when, for you, would do.
Oh, and despise for hate. Contempt is a distinct emotion from intense dislike.
(In general if a phrase or word has more syllables than needed it is probably erasing a useful distinction. But superfluous accumulation of syllables importantifies one's communication without committing oneself to inconveniently definite meaning.)
If we're imagining some kind of stuffy Edwardian gentleman saying "the lady will have the veal", then "and for yourself, sir?" could be an appropriate reply - because the gentleman in question is ordering one meal for the lady and one for himself.
In a society where it's normal for women to address and be addressed by waiters directly, then taking orders from the other people at the table, and then asking "and for yourself, sir?" makes less sense.
Thank you for that. I'm proposing to keep, cherish and in due course use that phrase in its proper sense when I find a suitably over-self-important person to be its reference.