If you want to be angry about neologisms, coinages, buzz words and new usages, you’ll always have an excuse, because they’re not going anywhere. But perhaps you want to be angry. People who are furious about language change only know about five examples, and go on about them the whole time. For a "thin end of wedge" theory to stand up, you really need thousands of examples.
an item on the agenda is an "agendum”
anticipate means “act as if something foreseen has already happened” not a “look forward to”
ate should be pronounced “et”. Or maybe “eight”.
data and media are plurals
don’t say like or the likes of when you mean such as
furze/gorse is the only true synonym
It’s Hallowe’en, not Halloween (and anyway it's a ghastly American import)
It’s PEJorative and PRImarily and MILItarily.
It's "I should like", not "I would like". "I would like" means "I should like to like". @frankish
It's the Union flag, not the Union Jack.
less stuff, fewer things
mind your ps and qs – it’s really please and thankyous
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out – it refers to the plant, not the month.
nice means precise
rich man – camel – eye of a needle (gate, rope)
rule the roost – it's really "roast" (cue long explanation about medieval banquets, yawn)
Scotch and Scottish are wrong – it’s Scots (or the other way round).
The nuns at school were very against “I don’t take dancing” and “I don’t have a pen” – Americanisms!
via means by way of, not by means of
When Hamlet said "I can tell a hawk from a handsaw" he was referring to a hansa or heron.
Who led the pedants’ rebellion?/Which Tyler
You can only use "between" if you're talking about two people or things, because tween means two. (For more than two, you use "among".)
A kid is a baby goat. Young people are children.
She’s Gillian – if we wanted to call her Jill we’d have christened her Jill.
a handsaw is a corruption of hansa or heron, so when Hamlet said "I can tell a hawk from a handsaw" he was really making sense.
among, between – between refers to two people or things; for any more you have to use "among"
a spiral staircase is really helical
Audrey Hepburn is pronounced Hebburn
Barbara Stanwyck is pronounced Stannick
cinema is pronounced keye-NEE-mar
clapboard is pronounced clabberd
it’s a facsimile machine not a fax
it’s a rule not a ruler (a ruler is a king)
it’s a telephone not a ‘phone
it’s an omnibus not a ‘bus
it’s irREFutable not irreFUtable it’s really “vicious cycle”, not “circle”.
kamilos was Greek for rope (it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven)
the Eye of the Needle was a narrow gate in Jerusalem (camel, eye, needle, rich man) (Straightdope.com says no such gate ever. Both Jesus and Hamlet were using hyperbole.)
patent is pronounced pattent not paytent
They’re not bread rolls but rolls.
They’re not seagulls but gulls.
too, too solid flesh is really “this too, too sullied flesh”
You can’t say “due to” for “because of” because you can only use it to mean “praise is due” or “thanks are due”. (If you can substitute "caused by", due to is correct; if you can substitute "because of", owing to is correct:)
You can’t say “thanks to” for “because of” because you aren’t sincerely thanking somebody.
You can’t saying “owing to” for because of because you can only use it for money that’s owing to the tax man.
You can't say "over 100", you must say "more than", for some reason I can't fathom.
The funniest example of misplaced pedantry I’ve seen for a long time
appears in a comment thread about what Google’s spiders are up to. Photo
Matt used the phrase, “Et tu, Googlebot.” François Briatte, thinking
himself clever, responds, “Correct French words would be : ‘et toi,
GoogleBot?’” I thought “Et tu, Brute” was one of two Latin phrases
(”veni, vedi, vici” the other) everyone could recognise. (Davos Newbies
Home April 22nd, 2004)
|
Pedantry
