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”.
none of them. linguistic gatekeeping is just disguised contempt for the poor. let people spell however the fuck they want.
Despite the down votes I suspect most linguists would agree with you as they generally disagree with prescriptivism. Language is fluid and ever changing. Many of the phrases we have that have survived hundreds of years have altered and changed many times over to fit the era. Many linguists believe language always alters towards efficiency over time. Staunchly insisting people continue to use things in the original way is just classism disguised as education. Ironically, yours was the only educated comment in here, imo.
Ghoti 🐟
We’re at a point in the information age where even the poor, for now, tend to have access to libraries and smartphones even if the school system failed them. I’ve known many with advanced vocabulary and disproportionate economic status. Heck, I’m not rich either but I know words and letters mean things if we’re to communicate well.
Many poor immigrants will say “sorry for my English” but be significantly more eloquent than the majority of privileged kids on Reddit or whatever. The difference? They care about being understood clearly.
There’s a certain irritation when it comes to people on the Internet who have the world at their fingertips and misuse language out of lazy habit, and continue to do so, even when gently and non-judgingly corrected.
This seems to happen often enough that misspellings or misuse seem to mislead people new to the concept or language, into an incorrect understanding in the first place.
It’s a silly discussion on willful, stubborn ignorance and how that’s a pet peeve. Nothing to get too bent out of shape over.
deleted by creator
People using ‘yourself’ and ‘myself’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘me’ when trying to sound formal or posh. You don’t sound formal or posh, you sound ill-educated.
People capitalizing Random Words for emphasis, as if they’re Proper Nouns.
Also getting ‘a’ vs ‘an’ wrong. It follows pronunciation, not spelling; so it’s “a European” and “an honor”.
What entitlement means vs false sense of entitlement.
I tell people they are entitled to their rights and have an entitlement to their social security money for example, and they get offended thinking I mean “false sense of entitlement” instead.
One thing is different from another, not than. One thing differs from another. It’s different from the other thing.
Although in the UK it’s “different to” for some reason.
Idk if this counts as a phrase, but on the internet, people talk about their pets crossing the rainbow bridge when they die. That’s not how the rainbow bridge poem goes. Pets go to a magnificent field when they die. They are healed of all injury and illness. When you die, they find you in the field and you cross the bridge together. It’s much sweeter the way it was written than the way people use it.
The vast majority of these issues could be solved if people a) read any halfway-decent book, b) and didn’t choose to remain willfully ignorant. It’s fine to misunderstand or just not know something. We’ve all been there, we’ll be there again. NBD. But to be shown or offered the correct way and still choose to do it wrongly? That’s not cool at all.
“Could of…”
It’s “could have”!
Also they’re/their, your/you’re, here/hear, to/too.
deleted by creator
That’s a dialectal difference, not an error.
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.
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.
Not when written
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.
Worst Case Ontario
Get two birds stoned at once!
Haahahhaahahhahahahahaahaah
Thanks! I’ll be using that from now on.
Reminds me of “Worse case scenario”
Worser cast scenario.
Pretty sure it’s “Feral Intensive Porpoises”
Former colleague used to say "for all intensive purposes"every few sentences.
To “step foot on”. I don’t care that millennial journalists are now sullying the literal NYT with this, it’s WRONG. It’s to set foot on. To SET foot on.
“Set foot” might be better established (and sound better), but “step foot” is not new.
Yeah yeah I know. But “set” (fun fact: it’s the word with the most meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary) is the transitive form of “sit”, so it’s more grammatical, more elegant and shorter than “step”. Which obviously comes from a mishearing by someone who didn’t read books, yet people will still get indignant and claim that it’s somehow better! I need to lie down. ;)
I like your comment for the most part, but:
obviously comes from a mishearing by someone who didn’t read books
This is assumptive and prescriptive. The link I sent demonstrates that it’s been used extensively and for a long time by people who not only read books, but write books. I’m on board that “set foot” is the better phrase and likely to be the earlier one, but trying to dictate which is correct is - respectfully - a fool’s errand.
Yes yes I know all that. Prescriptivism is bad, tut tut!, a serious linguist only describes language, etc etc.
But whether it was 400 years ago or yesterday, to me personally it’s thunderingly obvious that “step” comes from a mishearing, all while being inferior in every way. It’s even tautological, since the “foot” is already implied in the word “step”. It’s like saying “He was hand-clutching a bag”. One is short, logical, and respects grammatical convention. The other… isn’t and doesn’t.
Occasionally great new coinings come about from mishearings (can’t think of one right now but they exist). This is not one of them.
Step foot I’m stuck!
Wh… What are you doing, step-toe?
“flush it out” instead of “flesh it out” when designing a plan
I, too, like to abort all my ideas onto the page…
Sometimes you just need to send some dogs into that meeting and shoot the first plan that comes flying out.
That one drives me nuts too. “Coming down the pike” too. I’m not even sure that one is incorrect, I just dislike how overused and generic it sounds in the office
I think coming down the pike might be animal cruelty
Please explain
A pike is a type of fish and I was making a crude joke.
“Let’s flush out this design.”
“You got it!” [Slowly readies a grenade.]
“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.
No, it makes little literal sense. How much sense it makes contextually depends on the usage.
All your base are touched by us.
Good touch or bad touch?
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.
“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.”
