Wednesday snark

[chickenfeet]

It's a lovely sunny day so it must be time for a round of everyone's favourite game "word Nazis". Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to grouse volubly about more or less common and more or less egregious misuses of perfectly reputable English words.

Naturally I shall begin.

Disinterested. No, it's not a synonym for uninterested, still less for bored. It means unbiased or neutral as in not having a pecuniary interest in. Got that!

Shrapnel. No, it doesn't mean odd bits of metal splinters that fly around when something explodes. It's a particular kind of ordnance invented by one Lt. (later Maj-Gen) Henry Shrapnel in which a fuzed charge is used to eject a bunch of steel or lead balls from a shell container.

Please feel free to continue self righteously in comments or elsewhere.

Comments

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

'Incidence' is not a way of saying 'incident' that makes you sound smarter. Quite the opposite.

'Momentarily' is 'for a very short time', not 'soon'.

Houses get burgled (that's what burglars do - they burgle), not 'burglarized'.

'Equally' or '(just) as ... as', not 'equally as'.

I could go on all day, but that tea break's not going to take itself, you know.

[kadenza.livejournal.com]

My peeve of the moment is the misuse of "me" and "I". And don't get me started on "myself".

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

And don't get me started on "myself".

Me, myself, I shan't

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Refute means to disprove an argument. Not to dispute it, nitpick, or offer some other view of reality that suits you better.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

No it doesn't!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, have you paid for this argument?

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Decimate. When will people learn that that does not mean "totally to destroy"??! FFs, even the BBC do it these days!!!

Also people who use "Shall" when they mean "Will" because they think it makes them sound posher. I have specific wankers in mind here... (http://www.historicalfencing.org/Macdonaldacademy/master.htm)

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! And "Epicentre" is not a better way of saying "middle", or centre, or any other damned thing.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The rules that eg Fowler gives for the use of 'will' and 'shall' are so arcane it's a wonder everybody hasn't done an American and defaulted to the compound future. Personally, I shall continue to use 'shall' where it seems appropriate though.

[owlfish]

Ten percent down is very demoralizing. There's no need for news agencies to, oh, centimate things.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

Decimate refers to reducing by decimals, no?

Decimate is one of those terms that gets thrown around when discussing the impact of the virgin soil epidemics that hit Indigenous peoples in the last 400 years.

"The Copper Inuit were decimated by tuberculosis" or some such thing.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It originates from the practice in the Roman Army of executing one man in ten in units that had behaved disgracefully. The Red Army resorted to something similar on occasions during WW2.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes total sense.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

So, just to be clear about it: Decimate means to reduce by 10%. Not 90%, or any other factor.

Barbara Hambly at least knows what it means; she has Benjamin January remember his Classical education at a crucial point, avoiding decimation by standing third in line.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on "decimate" - but unfortunately popular usage means that the incorrect meaning is now accepted as common practice in most dictionaries.

True, popular doesn't make it right!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

"Lie" is an intransitive verb. "Lay" is a transitive verb. They are not synonyms, even though I know it's confusing that "lay" is the past tense of "lie". It is not the past tense of "lay"; that's "laid".

Actually, I don't think this is confusing at all, I'm just condescending to those who keep irritating me by getting them wrong.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Fug is a perfectly acceptable word. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been out nearly a year now and it's still doing the rounds as 'a misprint'. When's the paperback due? I will type up a definition and c&p it wherever necessary.

Enormity. Oh, the horror...

[nanila]

A wretch may retch. And retching is wretched.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Hungover again?

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Confusion of accept and except, affect and effect, less and fewer.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

*worships you*

[rosinarowantree.livejournal.com]

'Literally' when 'literally' isn't meant literally, but just for emphasis. That literally makes me tear my head off.

[keithlard.livejournal.com]

'Infamous' does not mean 'notorious'.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

You should play this everyday for my benefit.

Can I request a definition for a word that often gets mangled? I guess I could just yank out the old OED.

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

'Everyday' - daily or quotidian in nature
'Every day' - day after day

Sorry, this one bothers me.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

Well, I can blame the immersion system for teaching me poor english, since it isn't my first language.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I wish my French was a small fraction as good as your English.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

And you're not really sorry, are you? ;)

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

Well, it was initially 'sorry' as in 'Sorry, but you're wrong! Ha!' but now I feel bad for correcting a non-native speaker who was poorly taught.

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

Irregardless. This one annoys me. It does not mean, "Well, anyway, back to what I was saying..."

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

It doesn't mean anything at all, as it's not a word.

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

ETA: I'm sure you know this, but I can't help pointing it out anyway.

[gillo]

enormity does not mean "very big". And you can have an amount of flour but not of words or people.

And apostrophes do not make plurals!

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "impact" as a verb. It is not a verb. It is a noun. Correct: to have an impact on. Incorrect: to impact.

And then there's proactive. *grumblesnarl*

I see the grocer's apostrophe and irregardless got mentioned. Those are triggers for me, too.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Impact! That one makes my teeth ache. In my field (environmental engineering) it might just be the single most consistently misused word. For some reason, nobody wants to say "the water is polluted with chemicals," or even "contaminated," so they flail about searching for a less direct way of saying it. Over and over again, you read about water that "has been impacted by" some chemical or another. Aaargh!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hypatia_/]

Oh I *hate* impact used as a verb. This reaction is possibly strengthened by the fact that I hear it so often in buzzword bingo speech.

Ditto the grocer's apostrophe and general sloppiness/text speak in emails etc. I quote from one of today's emails:

In terms of DBA support the only area's that we need consideration for sre the index's and optimisers on the Databases in the Test Environment. Since this was a problem that we faced during the last test cycle for 1.5.

There are some minor schema changes that need to be applied as per the new BRR's but this is something the DEV team can execute.

This from a highly paid, client facing graduate on the Consulting (ie premium) career path.

Words failed me.

He's an arrogant twat as well.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

O.M.G. That is disgusting!

[white_hart]

Checkouts in supermarkets with signs that say '10 items or less'.

People at work who think that the thing they keep their pens and teabags in is a 'draw'.

Its instead of it's. And vice versa.

'Perogative' instead of 'prerogative'. And anyone who says 'pacific' instead of 'specific' (the lecturer for my final level Business Strategy exam did this. It's a wonder I made it through a three-day course without screaming.)

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

One of my students says "pacific" for "specific". Her writing is no better.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

"draw" is at least absolutely acceptable regional dialect.

'reference' when used as a verb (although technically correct, I hate it)

"subsequently" and "consequently" are not the same.

"Thusly"

[minx-minx.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as very unique. Either something is unique or it isn't -- no degrees.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

"Orientated." Because oriented just doesn't sound active enough, I guess.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Business talk: "impact", "key", ooh, I could go on.

I get really annoyed when people use "et cetera" as a verbal tick - I was at a very good talk on Tuesday, but the guy spolit it by saying "et cetera" after every sentence. This is something that I hate about the writing of George Orwell, which I otherwise love.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, "with all respect". Ha!

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

"Eck cetera" (can these people not read??)

I think others have covered most of my other pet peeves (affect/effect; everyday/every day; less/fewer)

"Off my own back" - it's BAT, you moron!

Log in (verb) versus login (noun/adjective, whatever you may think of it as a construction).

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the business-manglish "to action something".

I have a list of these that my students use, but it's at work.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

To clarify, I have a list of mistakes that my students have made. I don't give them the list. Though perhaps I should.