BS: Language Pet Peeves

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 01:58 PM

A beauty spotted in the Guardian just now:

"Backers of Dominic Raab...flocked almost en masse to Johnson."


"almost"?? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 02:26 PM

...en masse lite??

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 03:20 PM

There was a cartoon with a barbarian wedding, and the caption read It's about time they settled down and razed a village, and I laughed out loud in the doctor's office.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 03:53 PM

Did the doc have his hand under your t*est*ic*les at the time? Weren't you supposed to cough?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 10:09 AM

Calling a soldier a troop, as in "Insurgents attacked a truck and one troop died." A troop is a group, not a person.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 10:16 AM

Ooh I was just about to post that one!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 12:59 PM

Similarly, an "elite" now can mean a single person who presumably belongs to an elite group, just as a "minority" can mean a single person who belongs to a larger minority. Those battles are lost, I'm afraid.

Although, I always did find the usage of "troop(s)" awkward - never used it to refer to one soldier, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 01:15 PM

call me an old fashioned pedant but

a troup is the group and troops is (sic) the soldiers therein. I make a distinction. A troup of soldiers (could be circus performers though) we treat as an entity. Troops is, in my parlance, any agglomeration of (pretty much exclusively) soldiers.

Dare I throw designer in to the ring, and watch the ripples?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 11:37 PM

Groom cries as bride confesses love for his spouse. Bigamy?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 02:28 AM

I am no expert but isn't bride or groom only applicable before the vicar pronounces "husband & wife"?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: BobL
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 02:58 AM

The happy pair continue to be bride & groom throughout the wedding, presumably right until they leave the reception. They cease, however, to be affianced.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 03:59 AM

Groom cries as bride confesses love for his spouse.

He was married to a narcissist?

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 12:08 PM

I am still trying to figure out how a groom (not of horses) can have a spouse at all...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 12:23 PM

Perhaps the groom lives in a Muslim-majority country where polygamy is legal and he is taking wife number 2, 3 or 4.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 01:34 PM

And his new bride is gay? Yeah, that would work.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 01:35 PM

My poem on American spelling, "For Better Or Worse"
.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 05:23 PM

I doubt it too!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Jun 19 - 10:27 PM

This is not a peeve.

It has rained and rained here. The streams are rushing, farmers are worried that they will lose their crops, the tomato plants are half-drowned. People who used to end conversations with "Take care" or "Stay safe" are now saying "Keep dry."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 12:10 PM

Free reign, or reign in. Internet sight. There are more...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Charmion
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 12:19 PM

I call that "writing by ear", Mrrzy. Spell-check doesn't care about homonyms.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 03:13 PM

And why do Americans call football soccer?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Charmion
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 06:12 PM

“Soccer” derives from the “association” part of Association Football.

We have too many kinds of footie over here to let the kind you play without a helmet be called just “football”.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 06:36 PM

It's not only Americans who refer to association football as soccer. The term may also be used for football in the UK if there is need to distinguish it from rugby.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 05:24 AM

continue to be bride & groom throughout the wedding - so bride/groom/intended coexist with husband/wife/spouse for as long as they await a formal reception?

I can live with that. But I couldn't live with my ex-wifey. Though I did not divorce, I was divorced against.

Free reign, or reign in - Well free reign would make sense referring to someone "lording" it around, the case for reign in is far more tenuous.

in the UK if there is need to distinguish it from rugby - in NZ there is only one type of football - and it is "All Blacks". Soccer is played by the "All Whites".

And what about the Yorkshire** use of while in the context of until? Can easily cause confusion.

** other colours of rose are available.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 09:03 AM

It didn't phase him.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 09:12 AM

The principle sat in their cubical.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 05:02 PM

Well you can stand on your principles.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 06:52 PM

From Facebook today: someone talking about whiskey, when they mean whisky, then going on to talk about whisky's (plural, so drop the e and add an apostrophe??)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Jun 19 - 04:00 PM

Also worthy/sufficient *enough* - just a redundancy but in news or science writing...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 01 Jul 19 - 06:13 AM

'like' But maybe it's to avoid saying 'er' or stammering.

This like bus came round the like corner and like stopped.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Jul 19 - 08:33 AM

I actually saw childs instead of children in a headline yesterday. Sigh.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: clueless don
Date: 02 Jul 19 - 07:12 AM

I'm rather late to this party, but ...

It has actually been a number of years since I first encountered it, but a usage I despise is to use the verb "to plate" to mean "to put food on a plate", as in "Your meal will be quickly plated and served to you." Are they going to coat the food with gold?

Now I'll open myself to the collective abuse of the forum: I have long thought that if there were only two of something in the world (e.g. two surviving individuals if a species of animal), each one of those two could be correctly described as "almost unique". Yes, yes, I know that this idea could be expressed in some other way in order to avoid this usage of "unique", but that doesn't make this usage wrong. Let the flaming begin!

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 02 Jul 19 - 07:21 AM

I do get annoyed by people using a noun as a verb, of which this is a good example. Also airline pilots using route as a verb. Route is a now, root can be used as a verb. But mostly in Australia.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Jul 19 - 09:20 AM

Clueless Don, if I were writing about the world's last two anything, that fact about them would surely be worth a comment more precise than "almost unique". For example: "The last two white rhinoceroses in the world met yesterday in Kruger National Park. Unfortunately, both of them are male."

The French loan word "route" generates other problems in Canada, where we live with inexorable cultural pressure from our southern neighbours. We still use the French pronunciation, a homonym of the verb "root", as noted by David Carter(UK). Americans pronounce it as a homonym of "rout", which I understand as a verb that means "scour", "extract" or "put to flight" and is most often applied to defeated armies.

A piece of computer equipment called a "router", so called because it directs wireless signals to the correct receiving device, is American in origin (like most computer equipment), and is therefore pronounced like what happens to defeated armies. Unfortunately, this confuses people (like me) who (a) know what the thing does; and, (b) know about power tools, including the machine carpenters use to make fancy edges on boards and molding.

I wish that were my only problem with the United States of America.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Jul 19 - 11:29 AM

Charmion, me too.

Speaking of there being only two of things, it bugs me if people use Both or (N)Either for larger groups. As in, both rhinos, deer and goats have horns. Argh.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Jul 19 - 12:39 AM

Many people are inconsistent in their pronunciation of "route." On YouTube videos about pronunciation, they say that a highway is called a "root", but that in the stock phrase "If you want to go that route..." they make it rhyme with "out".

Such people are from both sides of the pond. I do it too.

Long ago there was a TV show called "Root 66." I bet its theme song had a lot to do with the preference for the oo sound today.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Jul 19 - 09:29 AM

I remember someone asking me out loud How do you pronounce root? I said root. Turned out she meant route, which I pronounce rout.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Jul 19 - 04:05 PM

Using the terms former and latter, so I have to re-read to see which is which. Like Rabbit, who got frustrated trying to count how many pockets he would need to carry his young in, I haven't the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Jul 19 - 04:07 PM

'respectively'

Jack fell down and broke his crown,
and Jill came tumbling after, respectively.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Jul 19 - 05:13 PM

Leenia, I am so with you on former/latter. Violates the Don't Make Your Reader Work rule.

And I don't mind language changing, I just wish somebody had told me when edgy went from meaning nervous to pushing the envelope (an expression I hate but what is better?)!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 04 Jul 19 - 06:06 PM

Heard on Radio Scotland tonight, said by a senior health (infection control)official: "It is absolutely incredulous that we would open this hospital....."
It is incredIBLE
I am incredULOUS

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jul 19 - 06:27 AM

Some time in the 1960s, my school's prize night, Bolton town hall, pompous mayor of Bolton in closing speech (imagine broad Bolton accent): "I've found this evenin' to 'ave bin most educative..."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Jul 19 - 01:42 PM

He was brung up proper then!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Jul 19 - 03:42 PM

Oh, and the terms vulva and vagina are neither synonymous nor interchangeable.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jul 19 - 04:55 PM

Why are you fannying around with stuff like that, Mrrzy? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Jul 19 - 08:47 PM

Hah!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: mayomick
Date: 08 Jul 19 - 09:25 AM

My neighbour and his friends were out camping in the Dublin mountains last week .They all got eaten alive by midgets .

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Jul 19 - 11:10 AM

I was listening to a podcast about philosophy the other day, but turned it off the third time the reader said "tenants" when the script (I hope) meant "tenets".

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 08 Jul 19 - 06:32 PM

Anatomical misnomers: as described by Mrzzy above, and also the common misuse of the other part of female anatomy, so often these days erroneously applied to anyone of either gender that one does not like/agree with one's own views: i.e. that one which rhymes with a certain PM candidate. Cannae bring masel' tae type it oot, but ye'll ken whit ah mean!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jul 19 - 08:50 PM

Are you talking about the man who's his own Cockney rhyming slang? As with James Blunt??