Please state what 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”.
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.
It’s always going to be the “of” people. Its “would have”, “should have” etc and not “would of”.
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.
People saying “exscape”, “expresso”, “pasghetti”
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.
About 1 in 3 posters here say “loose” when they mean “lose”
Online in general: using “reductio ad absurdum” as a fallacy.
It’s a longstanding logical tool. Here’s an example of how it works: let’s assume you can use infinity as a number. In that case, we can do:
∞ + 1 = ∞
And:
∞ - ∞ = 0
Agreed? If so, then:
∞ - ∞ + 1 = ∞ - ∞
And therefore:
1 = 0
Which is absurd. If we agree that all the logical steps to get there are correct, then the original premise (that we can use infinity as a number) must be wrong.
It’s a great tool for teasing out incorrect assumptions. It has never been on any academic list of fallacies, and the Internet needs to stop saying otherwise. It’s possible some other fallacy is being invoked while going through an argument, but it’s not reductio ad absurdum.
Well if we’re going to be talking about logical fallacies, I feel like the string of arguments that you made there is a category error. Infinity isn’t exactly a number, it’s more of a philosophical concept than anything else. I would argue that trying to subtract Infinity from Infinity is illogical and kind of silly, but it wouldn’t be a reductio ad absurdum as you put it, but instead a category error.
An absurdist argument might be more like, if I have one cat I can trade it for one dog. Therefore infinite cats can be traded for infinite dogs. This is obviously absurd, because infinite cats don’t exist, unfortunately.
“addicting”
Yeah /yĕ′ə, yă′ə, yā′ə/ is a different word than Yea /yā/
As in the well known Christmas carol, “Oh come, all ye faithful dudes,” verse 7, “Yeah, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning…”
Jä
Ya
I know someone that says ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘specific’. The man has his talents & his place in the world, food man, but yes that is infuriating.
I know someone who calls it the “Specific Ocean”
This specific ocean!!
Idiocracy is literally a documentary anymore
Haha is this a follow up on that one post with the OP writing “back-petal”?
Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.
Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.
Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.
FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.
“that begs the question”. I wish people would just use the more correct “raises the question”, especially people doing educational/academic content. I hear it across the English-speaking internet
From what I’ve understood, “begging” a question is more like “evading” a question. (Here’s a video)
Begging the question was originally a very specific logical fallacy. It’s a type of reasoning where you circularly try to prove your argument. I just kinda wish the usage wasn’t being muddied. https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-original-meaning-of-begging-the-question
Using “racking” instead of the correct “wracking” in “wracking my brain”. Not very common, but it annoys me… But not as much as “could of”… That is the worst, just stop it!
This is online and in person in Canada.
