BS: Language Pet Peeves

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Mr Red
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 05:02 PM

Well you can stand on your principles.

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: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 09:03 AM

It didn't phase him.

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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 12:10 PM

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

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: 22 Jun 19 - 05:23 PM

I doubt it too!

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 - 01:34 PM

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

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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 10:16 AM

Ooh I was just about to post that one!

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: 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: 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 - 02:26 PM

...en masse lite??

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 - 01:44 PM

Was she razed to the ground? Or, worse (and I assure you I've seen it), raised to the ground?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 01:17 PM

Today there was a headline about a woman being killed to death.

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

Assonance means getting the rhyme wrong?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 09:08 AM

Or a sea change...

Now on the matter of unique, get a grip, chaps. I should think that a majority of people (only guessing) who use unique in everyday parlance add a modifier. What they are doing is using the word in a different sense to the one you wish to cling to. They are not saying the only one of a kind. They are saying special, different, outstanding, all words that can take a modifier. The word is undergoing a dichotomy of meaning. That's how language evolves and we should cheer it on. So far it's only a nice distinction (see what I did there...?), but you won't stop it growing.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: BobL
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 03:07 AM

Unique is like dead or pregnant - either you are or you aren't. Same qualifiers, more or less, can be applied to each.

However, one thing that really bugs me is people saying "quantum leap" (by definition, the smallest possible change) when they mean something more like a paradigm shift.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 02:58 AM

using an apostrophe before the s in order to make a plural.

yea, it is gross, can't think of anything grocer ..................



I'll get my thesaurus.....

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: robomatic
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 12:54 AM

using an apostrophe before the s in order to make a plural.

using any modifier to the word 'unique'. (Although apparently my position is hopeless "'very unique' is here to stay".

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Jos
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 11:48 AM

Although people who use 'decimate' do not usually mean 'to destroy one in ten', they do not usually mean 'annihilate', meaning 'to reduce to nothing' (Latin 'nihil'). They may, however, mean 'to destroy a large proportion' such as nine out of ten.

I am annoyed by people saying 'just because [...] doesn't mean ...', when what they should be saying is 'just because [...] it doesn't mean ...' or 'just because [...] that doesn't mean ...'.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 10:25 AM

"one bans ... activities" - To say that banning people from wearing something is 'banning people' rather than banning an activity ('wearing') may be correct in a strictly grammatical sense, I don't know - but, boy, it sure is subtle. Good luck with that one.

I do agree that 'forbidding' would be better, and it has a more menacing connotation, which suits the fascistic law it refers to.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 10:14 AM

I think that switch from 'of' to 'for' is deliberate. 'Excellence' isn't just sitting there, static; it's to be created (re: "to indicate purpose or advantage") - 'Centre for Excellence' is an abbreviated way of saying 'Centre for the Creation or Discovery of Excellence'. Similarly, 'the home for rock music' suggests more dynamism than does 'the home of rock music'; it conflates the sense of rock music coming to the station to find a home - rather than already being there sitting by the fire - and listeners coming to the station to find rock music.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 09:43 AM

The modern usage of decimate is perfectly fine. Only pedants are insisting on its one-in-ten meaning. You've lost that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Charmion
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 09:35 AM

Editor here. I do this for a living, and have for (literally) decades.

I have considerable patience with new meanings for old words (e.g., gay), but very little for self-inflicted grammar injuries (e.g., if I would of known). The former is evolution in the language; the latter is the bastard child of ignorance of verb forms and refusing to revise after writing by ear.

The great glory of English is its bewildering variety of vocabulary, so I shake my head in pity over a text that confuses "decimate" and "annihilate", "substitute" and "replace", "flaunt" and "flout". Today, I read in the Globe & Mail about a new law in the Province of Quebec that "bans public servants from" wearing outward and visible signs of religious belief -- irritating to me because one bans things (automatic weapons, for example) and activities (such as pissing in the gutter), not people. People are "forbidden to" do something, or "prevented from" doing it.

For the advanced class, we also have the gradual disappearance of the preposition "of" (representing the genitive or possessive case), now being overtaken by "for" (traditionally used to translate the dative case, and to indicate purpose or advantage). We used to have "centres *of* excellence", but we are now seeing "centres *for* excellence". In my youth, the oldies radio station in Ottawa would have been called "Ottawa's home *of* rock music", but lately it has become the "home for rock music". Why does that matter? Well, to me, the form using "of" indicates the actual presence of rock music, but the form using "for" indicates only the intention of providing rock music, but not necessarily the actuality. That distinction (admittedly subtle) has apparently disappeared while I was not looking.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 09:14 AM

A standard car with unique features.

Don't think I am being overly pedantic but.......

A standard car with unique decoration/colouring/appearance/presentation

A feature is functional and I can only think of one function for psychodelic appearance, and that is ego, or corporate identity if you are Mr Red.

Getting it right ain't so easy for pedant in the real non-binary world. Trust me, (:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 05:35 AM

There's more than a whiff of grammar policing going on here. A few decades ago, gay meant one thing. Now it means two things. That's language evolution for you. I'm quite happy to see people saying quite unique or fairly unique, etc, and would never insist on their rebuilding their sentence. What you're missing is the gentle morphing of the word into two forms. The one won't damage the other, so stop fretting!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 04:54 AM

A standard car with unique features.

It takes very little effort to get it right.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 03:41 AM

There aren't degrees of uniqueness.

I would agree lexicographically, but real life ain't binary. A standard Ford car might come in yellow, or red (please) or any colour as long as it's black. But if you paint it in psychodelia then it is unique, but you can still get the same tyres or windscreen wiper blades for it, which means it isn't (ha - hide yer eyes) that unique!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 11:36 AM

When typing in a forum such as this, my personal rule is to use standard quotation marks "...." for known exact quotes, but when there is a phrase I am not sure of, or that *I* claim as my own creation, I like to use single quote apostrophes '....'.

It's just my attempt to indicate in print what I would try to show in speech. Mudcat is great in allowing various HTML code to allow ^rising and _falling inflection etc....