Well, now I'm just further confused. But at least I'm amongst friends!
Posted on 05/29/2007 2:17:17 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Readers have responded in their thousands to The Daily Telegraph's call to select the worst phrases in the English language.
Since our invitation was issued in February, more than 3,000 of you have submitted personal inventories of the damned, containing the phrases, aphorisms and clichés that irritate the most.
High on the list of grievances was the increasing use of slang, poor grammar and the incorporation of Americanisms into everyday speech.
Many of you shared frustrations over the misuse of "forensic" and "literally", while management jargon such as "downsizing", "brainstorming" and "thinking outside the box" also received plenty of nominations.
The Daily Telegraph has responded with its own compilation of annoying phrases, and She Literally Exploded: The Daily Telegraph Infuriating Phrasebook is now available on Amazon.
Here is a selection of your comments so far:
"It's not rocket science". Rocketry is engineering, not a science. - Tony
The phrase "up close and personal" was irritating to start with and has become hackneyed and meaningless e.g. I went on a river trip and was thrilled to get up close and personal with a crocodile - Margot Lang
I can't stand "to die for". Nothing's that good and even if it was, you'd be dead and wouldn't be able to enjoy whatever it was. - Vivsy
"Pushing the envelope" always conjures up for me some ridiculous scene in a mailing room or post office. - Nigel Brown
Why, when someone famous dies, do tributes always "pour" in? Also, when a plane crashes in the sea, the media is quick to remind us that the waters are always "shark-infested". - S.Winrad
Only £1,999.99. - P.H.Heilbron
"This door is alarmed". Is it really frightened? - Alan Lawrence
The infuriating rising inflections at the end of sentences that make everything sound like a question? - Steve Grant
I hate being addressed as "hallo there". My name is not "there". And why have all the cookery books and frying pans disappeared? What is a "cook" book and a "fry" pan? - Susan Byers
When the waitress plonks the plate in front of you and says, "there you go". Where do I go? Where's there? - Ken Clarke
"It will be in the last place you look". Well of course I'm not going to continue to look for it when I have found it. - Tom Batt
Spelling and proper usage! Yes, do that one please.
To/too/two. Know/now. They’re/their/there. Except/accept. Allowed/aloud. Sight/site/cite. Faze/phase.
I could go on and on. Like...you know what I mean? ;)
“Further” *can* be used as a verb, yes. “Farther” can’t be. Otherwise, both are adjectives or adverbs, depending on usage.
Had to go look it up. “Amongst” is the British form of the preposition “among”. Still, my use of it was superfluous - I could have just said “by intelligent people”, or to be more exact, educated people.
Well, now I'm just further confused. But at least I'm amongst friends!
Yeah, it appears that you can use “further” anywhere that you might use “farther”, but not vice-versa. I can’t immediately see any real difference in connotation between them in the cases where you could use either.
Grammar police are in high demand on this thread. Come quick!
I hate when that happens.
I remember arguing with my 6 th grade teacher about the words lumber and wood. He said they had different meanings; I looked them up in the dictionary and found them to be interchangable. He was not as thrilled with my discovery as I was.
That’s how I feel about “amongst,” as in “talk amongst yourselves.” In fact, when I *say* it, as opposed to writing it, I’m thinking it “amoungst,” lol - but you’d never know it.
I got sent to the principal by my 5th grade teacher in Oklahoma for correcting him in class as to the pronunciation of Atchafalaya, the river in the poem about Evangeline.
He said it like it’s spelled and I said it’s “Chaffa-lie.” Despite my being the county’s rep at the state spelling bee, he told me I obviously couldn’t read OR spell.
My daughter has a new boyfriend from England. He would not believe that the city of Cheyenne was pronounced like it is. He insisted it was Cheney- as in Dick Cheney.
We laughed at him, but he got us back when we were looking at a map of London. We were looking for Leicester square (lie-chester). Turns out it is pronounced Lester. Who knew ?
There's a river in southeastern Colorado named by early Spanish settlers the Purgatorie.
It's pronounced picketwire. I kid you not.
Damage from climate change may cost Alaska $10 bln
Bzzzzzzzzzt. Not quite. The author doesn't mean "may" (a sense of permission), but rather "might" (a question of probability).
That’s why nobody uses it correctly. When someone wants the impossible or undoable...the response is: So you want to eat your cake and have it too? The way most people use it is in fact possible and doable. You want to have your cake and eat it too. In fact you can have your cake and then eat it. The real trick is to eat your cake and still have it...can’t be done...It’s just a minor peeve of mine.
Yup.
I like Briticism, save for... “whilst”. It’s like fingernails on the proverbial blackboard. I think it’s because a Canadian division of my company had a particularly annoying British transplant manager who sprinkled that word in his conversation.
It always seems to be embedded in a long dry pedantic and condescending monologue.
I'm amazed nobody has so far griped about the way teenagers use the word:
So I'm like: "Grossss!" And she's like: "No way!"
I never said heighth wasn’t a word. I said pronouncing height as heith was incorrect.
“I never said heighth wasn’t a word. I said pronouncing height as heith was incorrect.”
That’s a bit picayune, but irregardless it was, like, definately MY bad, so I hope y’all don’t go nukular on me 24/7...whilst otherwise I could care less, Dewd....!!!
This is an influence of Europe where final t's are pronounced very sharply, unlike American English where the word is pronounced whud as in whuddyawan.
It is a positive development for improved articulation.
;)
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