This is my annual rant about the mayhem inflicted by the uncaring speakers, but not really writers, of our beautiful mother tongue. Ah, the things they think they’re saying, when they’re not really thinking at all.
A local reporter wrote a mournful piece about a plaintive in a court case. Perhaps he thought that a plaintiff was just an ordinary fight.
Twice in two days, I read about a slathering fiend. That’s your kid, when he puts too much peanut butter on his toast. A slavering fiend drips saliva from his fangs.
You are more of a trooper than I am – only if you’re in the army or police force. A member of a troupe of actors, who believes the show must go on, is a trouper.
No matter what path you lead before – confuses the past tense verb, led, with the metal, lead.
Taking a quick peak into the mall shops, happens because it’s often a sneak peek, two words which sound the same, but are spelled differently. I don’t think they have any mountains in there.
From my prospective, I don’t think – Yes, it’s obvious you don’t think, you prospective dolt. If you did, you’d think about a visual, or mental perspective.
The populous didn’t know what was happening. That’s because the information didn’t go to the adjective, but to populace, the noun.
Song writers often miss the mark by trying to be creative. An oldie, still sometimes played, bemoans “songs we used to like” and other, unnamed things, perhaps like bell-bottomed jeans and disco balls, which have gone out the window. They may be gone, in the normal state of progress, but “gone out the window” is like throwing out the baby with the bath water – precipitately, prematurely, and without proper consideration.
A similar complaint could be made about the tune that sings about, “Our house, in the middle of the street.” I can just see poor Mom, run over by a semi, roaring through the back door as she’s serving soup. I’m pretty sure Our house, was, in the middle of the block.
There were hundreds of make-ship signs, but there were no ships, because the shiftless protesters only made make-shift signs, while they were at the coffee shop pouring over the details. Fortunately none got spilled on the keyboard, and they found that, by getting right down to the skin, they were poring over details.
You might think that if two guys were either whaling, or wailing, at each other, one of them would be correct. Sadly, not so! Wales are strips, or ridges, as in wide-wale, or narrow-wale corduroy, a string-like fabric that once, only French kings could wear. Corde du Roi – the string of the King. The strips of planks which made up the hulls of wooden ships were wales, at the top of which were installed the cannons, making them gunwales, or gunnels, for the linguistically lazy. So actually, these guys were waling on each other – shoulda used dictionaries.
To keep the fans appraised of what’s happening. What’s happening is, I’ve appraised that the fans should have been apprised.
She didn’t let the news phase her, because she was in the phase where she didn’t know that she should be fazed.
The candidate was taking her queue from the Liberals. If she stood in the line long enough, the stage manager would have given her her cue.
More bitching about crossword puzzles:
FAQs are not data. They are Frequently Asked Questions. The answers to the questions comprise the data.
Part of DVD – Video Somebody just doesn’t know that the V in DVD stands for versatile.
Joyous to Burns – Aglee Just because the word contains “glee,” doesn’t mean it’s happy. It comes from the Scottish, “gley”, meaning squint, and means askew or awry. SpellCheck doesn’t even recognize aglee. I’ll have to click “Add to Dictionary.”
How so does not mean why. Wherefore means why, despite generations of incorrect teaching of Romeo and Juliet. How so (or howso) explains how something came to pass or exist, though showing that usually also displays why it occurred.
I wrote that I didn’t want to add any more to the problem. SpellCheck/GrammarCheck insisted that it should be anymore, a totally different concept. It also “corrected” a line to read, “I don’t know how you people does it.”
I used the word Clientele in a sentence. SpellCheck insisted that it should be Clientage, an archaic word, hardly used anymore. For a laugh, I agreed to put it in, and SpellCheck now insisted that it should be client age. There’s just no pleasing this computer.
I don’t know if the writers of the TV series N. C. I. S. were serious, or making a joke, but they irritated me, twice. They had the supposedly intelligent female lab tech describe a couple of agents, “grasping at hollow poly–styrene tubes.”
Firstly, the statement is redundant. If they’re hollow, they’re tubes. If they’re not hollow, they’re rods. Secondly, city-dwellers may not remember, but the saying refers to tall, dried grass stalks, not modern drinking implements. If there are no logs or sticks handy, a drowning person will grasp at straws.
Suspect fleas officer – Why? Did the officer have termites?
The stationary company, BIC – just sat there, making stationery.
You can have pie Alamo – but only in Texas.
The worst I found was, at least, a non-professional comment on a blog-site. “Cookie Monster should of lernt restraint right from the start I which him the best” Again, so few words, so many mistakes! 😦
Like too many others, this gal hears *should’ve* but doesn’t remember from school, and puts in *of* to make the (‘ve) sound. Learnt is archaic, but acceptable, if you learned to spell it correctly. She could have learned to put periods after “start” and “best”, and I wish people like her knew what they were writing about.
I’ll leave you with the best. It’s still wrong, but it’s cute. A guy wanted to sell his house, because he didn’t want to live on a cuddle sack.
Archon's Den 