The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #132499   Message #3996596
Posted By: Gurney
16-Jun-19 - 12:49 AM
Thread Name: BS: Language Pet Peeves
Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
BBCWrestler (if I may call him that)up there picked one of mine. I watch American Pickers on the TV, and Mike Wolfe often says "Very Unique."
It is or it isn't unique. There aren't degrees of uniqueness.

Another term that I thought was peculiar to Americans was the use of the term 'Careen' when they mean 'Career." One means to clean a ship, the other (among other meanings) to move erratically. I just checked on Wordweb, the (possibly American) computer dictionary, and even that useful application doesn't know the difference, although it claims both words to the 'move erratically' meaning. Also, it has jammed up on me for asking!

Many English speakers often use 'an' before a word that begins with 'H,' such as 'An horrific accident, An herb garden.'

Books generally have dispensed with speech marks " in favour of quotation marks '.