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”.
Having made some of these mistakes, I tend not to be rigid about them. But here are some fun ones.
- on line vs in line
- to graduate vs to be graduated
- antivenom vs antivenin
All of the above have been normalized, but at one time was not.
Another quirk, we used to not call former Presidents President So and So. We used to call them by their highest position before president. So it would be Senator Obama and not President Obama.
“Toe the party line” To align with the interests of a political party; to get in line with the agenda of the leader of a political party
“Tow the party line” Something to do with tugboats
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.
Irregardless
“Most best”
It’s “I didn’t taste it, let alone finish it.” not “I didn’t finish it, let alone taste it.”. Not those exact words, of course. People get it wrong more often than not IME. The wrong version never makes sense, and it always trips me up.
Don’t think I’ve seen that myself, but that would be pretty fucking annoying for sure.
Oh man, “let alone” is severely misused. Good one!
A whole nother.
Alright (as one word instead of two).
Also USA.
Alright and all right have different meanings to me.
Alright is either a exclamation (“Alright!”) or a synonym for “okay”. (“Everything is going to be alright”)
All right is means all correct. (“The answers were all right”.)
Never thought of the idea of “alright” being an issue. I can see why it makes sense, it’s obviously derived from “all right”, though funnily enough that never occurred to me because I’ve always just thought of it as a word in its own right and never pondered its derivation.
So do you also “all ready” and “all though” and “all ways”? That just seems weird.
No, that’d be silly.
Alright, how do you explain this?
It’s aight.
They are free to be wrong. I’m free to be pedantic about things that don’t matter to other people.
I will die on the alright hill. I have already committed to it, and I have had altogether too much of pedantic prescriptivists /s
But in all seriousness, I use and support “alright” and will never, ever stop using it. But I support your right to be wrong about how language actually works ;)
Meh, we can disagree over beers. I have no qualms with people talking.
I left them know
I’m just leaving you know
No, no, a thousand times no!
You LET them know. You’re just LETTING me know.
“The proof is in the pudding.”
The actual phrase is: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won’t know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.
“The proof is in the pudding” doesn’t mean anything.
The only one that continues to bug me is using “an” instead of “a” before a word that starts with a consonant sound. I especially dislike the phrase “an historic” (as in “it was an historic victory”) which has bafflingly been deemed acceptable. Unless you’re a cockney, it should be “a historic”. The rule is to use “an” if the word starts with a vowel sound, and “a” otherwise. IMO.
it sounds like yunicorn, so it’s a unicorn, not an unicorn.
I believe this comes from people trying to show off their education. Traditionally, words with a french descent were pronounced with a silent H. So for example hospital (from French hôpital) is an hospital, where hound (from Germanic hund) is a hound.
This is pretty much deprecated these days and anyone enforcing it is beyond grammar nazi, but it’s interesting to know the pattern.
Source: my secondary school English teacher.Well hell, I use “an” before historic, every time.
It’s fine if you drop the letter “h” when you speak - like I do. It then becomes “an ‘istoric” and sounds correct.
I follow Jeremy Clarkson and intentionally always use the wrong one. There’s an horse. A apple.
Ditto.
I’ve mentioned this here before but in the UK “an historic” is written because we are slowly dropping the letter “h” at the front of words from pronunciation. UK people often say “an ‘istoric” so it kinda makes sense… but looks clumsy.
It also makes it more clear your not saying “ahistoric” or “ahistorical”
honour, hour, homage, honest, heir
This one never gets me anywhere, but “begging the question” is actually a logical fallacy where you assume the result and use that as the basis of your argument. Otherwise, it raises the question.
The same goes for the exception that proves the rule. People use it as a magic spell that does away with unwanted evidence but it’s self explanatory. No parking on Fridays means you can park every other day.
There’s an exception to every rule (except that one)
That’s actually a post-hoc rationalization; in the original phrase, “proves” has a meaning closer to “tests”. But, yes, people use this one all the time to justify being wrong either way.
How do you feel about other words or phrases that have different meanings in specific fields vs common use? Like a scientific theory is very different from your buddy’s theory about what the movie you watched meant. Since beg is a stronger word than raise, some statements scream out for questions in response, while others merely give rise to some further need for clarification.
I
couldcouldn’t care lessHold
downthe fortThe proof
is in the puddingof the pudding is in the eatingelon muskTwatIt’s, “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.”
Irregardless
This is literally a restaurant near me. Quite good one too
Irregardless.
Without regardless
Without without regard
With regard
I’m going to end my emails with irregardless and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen?
“Irregardless, MajorMajormajormajor.”
I’m writing with regards to the issue of…
That’s very friendly and I’ll be sure to forward your regards…🙄
I don’t do it that much anymore as I learned to enjoy the freedom of using language, but I recently watched a miniminuteman video where he says pause for concern. which kinda makes sense so it’s an eggcorn: something that would cause concern would hopefully also make one pause for a moment.
apparently this is a commonly misheard phrase though this was the first time I heard someone say it.
My pet peeve is when people use “then” but they actually meant to use “than”. I think it might be mainly due to flaws in predictive text on phone keyboards though.
Fuck yes. Most annoying mistake in English. Seems to have sharply risen during the last few years
More then a few made the mistake back than, too.
It’s one of those ones that bother me too as a non-native speaker, they’re such different words from each other when you learn them more from reading than oral exposure. The they’re/their/there trio is another one where I can’t fathom how people have issues distinguishing them.
