Posted on 09/08/2014 6:29:29 AM PDT by PeteePie
Discussions of English Language pet peeves provide an entertaining forum for the expression of ire. In fact, if a “pet” is something we cherish, and a “peeve” is something that annoys us, “pet peeves” are what we love to hate. Here’s a collection of common English solecisms—guaranteed not to literally blow your mind:
(Excerpt) Read more at theworldsgreatestbook.com ...
Present/Imperative: dive
Past: dove
Perfect: dived
Pluperfect: had dived
Subjunctive: would/could have dove
>> I also hate “conversate.” <<
That’s a new one for me. Thanks!
Re: Ask vs. Aks (Axe)
My understanding is that this pronunciation has been the norm in some English dialects for hundreds of years. Nothing new or recent about it.
Moreover, the “reversal” of consonants here is a common sort of happening not only in English but in many other languages. The phenomenon is known as “metathesis” by linguists.
(Nothing to do with cancer! That would be “metastisis.”)
When I was 20, I worked one summer with a young British girl. She had married a GI and came to America when he was discharged. Very nice, very shy and reserved.
One Monday morning someone asked me if I had done anything exciting with my weekend. Being Southern, I said, “No, just piddled around the house.”
My British friend turned beet red in the face. When she recovered, she explained that in her version of English ‘piddled’ meant something like going wee wee in the corner.
As Churchill said - two peoples; separated by a common language.
If so, does that make it correct?
Excellent.
Check out the other posts: It seems “dove” for us Americans and “dived” for the Brits.
Unless you're down south. There it's written as 'coulda'.
Like coulda, shoulda and woulda.
I hear this one all the time at work. It’s easy. The miss was a miss. It was near as opposed to wide. That’s all.
You’re exactly right. It was impossible to end a sentence with a preposition in Latin (or to split an infinitive) because the preposition was given by the form of a single word (and an infinitive verb was also a single word). Thus, the early English grammarians said that one should not do these things in English, because they were not done in Latin.
Sometimes it works better to end a sentence with an infinitive, and sometimes splitting an infinitive just sounds better in English.
I learned this from a book called “Woe is I”, author forgotten.
I know I’m late to the thread, but my own top pet peeve is the misuse of the phrase “beg the question”. It does not simply mean to raise or call for a question. The meaning is to reason from a point which has been assumed, not proven. Too many people have heard the phrase somewhere, and think they’ll sound all intellectual by using it, but have no idea of its actual meaning.
(Oh, and another peeve is putting an apostrophe in the possessive of “it”.)
“(Oh, and another peeve is putting an apostrophe in the possessive of “it”.)”
—
Laughing here. I used to do it until a Freeper straightened me out.
My pet peeve-—people who say “3:00 A.M. in the morning”.
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Yeah, that one’s annoying too. Another peeve is using “moot” to mean “irrelevant”, when it actually means “open to debate”. Not the same thing at all.
>> My British friend turned beet red in the face. When she recovered, she explained that in her version of English ‘piddled’ meant something like going wee wee in the corner. <<
I used to live across the hall from a British chick. One day she volunteered to drive me over to the mechanic’s shop to pick up my car. She said, “Just come over and knock me up whenever you’re ready.”
Better late than never. It’s been a great little thread and I learned beyond the contents of the article, thanks to the higher intelligence factor of our FR collective.
Maybe I was out that day, but what is a “price point”?
One that really irks me and gets my ire up is when the pimple-faced cashier says, “that’s gonna be $9.40”. I always want to say, “that’s fine, but I want to know what it is NOW!”
“price point.” I hate all these euphemisms and weak-a$$ metaphors born out of corporate speak; “touch points,” “at the end of the day,” “buyer experience,” “purchasing decision journey,” I could go on but am irritating my ulcer.
Ahhh, I see. “Corporate speak”. We used to call that “business lingo”. Yes, I did miss that class. So tell me, is “purchasing decision journey” a euphemism for shopping or hunting?
Thank you. Link was fun, too.
I suppose “purchasing decision journey” could then relate to the hunter following the trail of the shopper.
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