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Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
"If worse comes to worst..."
In British English, they often say the phrase as "if worst comes to worst," which is based on archaic grammar.
In the US, there's a mix of verb tenses. The only one that make sense in this day and age is "if what is worse comes to be the worst," or "if worse comes to worst."
This point can be argued, but I will be severely wounded (maybe not so much as dying) defending this hill.
My pet peeve is when people use "then" but they actually meant to use "than". I think it might be mainly due to flaws in predictive text on phone keyboards though.
You do things on purpose or by accident, you don't do anything on accident.
Coming from the other direction - when someone ackshullys a parson, but the person was using the phrase correctly.
I had to explain to someone online today that "liminal space" had multiple meanings, and it didn't only refer to spaces you transition through, and the spooky "liminal space aesthetic" is a valid and coherent use of the word "liminal" and the term "liminal space"
"per se" (US) - people generally use it as "exactly" or "specifically", e g. "It's not circular, per se, more like a rounded rectangle". However, it actually means "in and of itself". I have a coworker that misuses this one constantly (and also spells it incorrectly) and it's become a huge pet peeve.
Huh TIL I've been using per se wrong. Thanks stranger!
Aisle. As much as I would love to take a boat to the breakfast food isle (a.k.a. island), I'm pretty sure that I need to look in the breakfast aisle at the grocery store.
Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.
Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.
Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.
FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.
The "positive anymore" is a vile grammatical abomination spawning from the Midwest US.
Normally using the word anymore has a negative tone to it (I don't eat meat anymore) . Except when used in this manner which seems to be when they should instead be saying currently or nowadays.
I find it viscerally unappealing.
"You can't have your cake and eat it" The older form was flipped: "you can't eat your cake and have it" They both can mean about the same, but the older form makes it much clearer - if you've eaten your cake, you no longer have it. But you could have your cake, then eat it.
The only one that continues to bug me is using "an" instead of "a" before a word that starts with a consonant sound. I especially dislike the phrase "an historic" (as in "it was an historic victory") which has bafflingly been deemed acceptable. Unless you're a cockney, it should be "a historic". The rule is to use "an" if the word starts with a vowel sound, and "a" otherwise. IMO.
I’ve mentioned this here before but in the UK “an historic” is written because we are slowly dropping the letter “h” at the front of words from pronunciation. UK people often say “an ‘istoric” so it kinda makes sense… but looks clumsy.
Bonus: my friends are parents of elementary-school children. 'Skibidi' is one of so many words they researched carefully to make sure and screw up its usage as often as they can. It's a game, and I think they secretly keep score of eye-rolls earned. They're doing hero's work.
On accident, it is by accident. 🤬
It's "I didn't taste it, let alone finish it." not "I didn't finish it, let alone taste it.". Not those exact words, of course. People get it wrong more often than not IME. The wrong version never makes sense, and it always trips me up.
To "step foot on". I don't care that millennial journalists are now sullying the literal NYT with this, it's WRONG. It's to set foot on. To SET foot on.
Those mis-stated phrases are called eggcorns. They’re a fascinating contributor to the evolution of language.
The term egg corn (later contracted into one word, eggcorn) was coined by professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003 in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a group blog for linguists.[5] In his article, Liberman discussed the case of a woman who had used the phrase egg corn for acorn, and he noted that this specific type of substitution lacked a name. Pullum suggested using egg corn itself as a label.[6]
"flush it out" instead of "flesh it out" when designing a plan
"Let's flush out this design."
"You got it!" [Slowly readies a grenade.]
"If" with nothing before it after it. If you'll call me back... That means nothing! If you call me then we can talk. I would appreciate it if you would call me back.
