Post your linguistic pet peeves here.
I'll start with with the improper use of the third person plural personal pronoun "they" when the singular form is called for.
(See below for the correct pronoun to use in this case.)
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See, all those other pronouns -- xe/xem/xyr, ze/hir/hirs and ey/em/eir -- I think are letting the perfect get in the way of the good. They works. We're already using they, and have been since long before it became a hot-button issue. We hadn't been using it in print very much until recently, but in speech, it was pretty universal, and universally understood. The problem is, dictionaries and grammar books ignored how it was being used, so it wasn't codified. Any references on how to use it now are fairly new, but the usage is pretty ingrained despite that.
I own a copy of The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary published in 1979. It's not what you would normally consider "compact", as it runs to two photo-reduced volumes containing a total of over four thousand pages, which need to be read with a magnifying glass. The original full-sized dictionary (copyright 1971) of which this is a photo-reduction was over 16,000 pages long!
This dictionary defines "they" as follows:
1. As pronoun of the third person plural, nom. case; the plural of he, she or it: The persons or things in question, or last mentioned.
2. Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex ( = 'he or she').
This second definition is followed by a series of quotations showing "they" being used as a singular pronoun, dated 1526, 1535, 1749, 1759, 1835, 1858, 1866 and 1874.
With this in mind, I suggest that, if someone wishes to do so, they should be allowed to use singular "they". Conversely, if someone disapproves of this usage, he or she should be free to use "he or she" instead.
Personally, I think the second usage is clumsy, and singular "they" is better in most cases.
Commander Benson said
Mistaking infer to be a fancier way of saying imply is probably the most common example of this. In fact, this one is so abused, more people than not know it's wrong.
Watching movies from the 1930s and ‘40s I am occasionally distracted by the misuse of “infer” even then.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
I remember Richard's thread (at least I'm consistent in my pet peeves), and of course I remember the Commander's perennial column as well.
A new mispronunciation has come to my attention recently. It’s sort of a local (Southern California) thing. Just east of where I am, the area that is called the “Inland Empire” was given that name a few years back (probably by real estate sellers) to refer to the general area of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, minus the desert areas. One of the morning news people had a habit of saying “Inland Umpire.” I must not have been the only one irritated by this, because good effort (most of the time) was made to correct this for the future. Now if only someone would do the same for the word “cavalry.”
The Baron said:
Also, not a grammar issue, but every class consisted of nothing else but him reading the textbook to us, No Q&A, no explication, no checking to see whether we were absorbing the material, nothing.
The college could have saved money and simply hired someone who was good at reading aloud at a lower salary.
The Baron said:
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, precision of meaning is vital for accurate communication. On the other hand, languages grow and evolve, words gain and lose meanings, and there's nothing that anyone can do to stop that. I'm not saying that we have to like that, but I'm afraid that we're going to have to lump it.
The word “decimate” means (or used to mean) the death of 10% of a group of people. Today the Cambridge Dictionary says “to destroy large numbers of people, animals, or other creatures, or to harm something severely” is now the first meaning and the original meaning is now the second meaning. This seems to be the consensus of all the dictionaries.
The word “suffer” used to mean “allow” or “let” when the King James Bible was translated from Latin to English. When some people read “suffer the children” they think someone is mistreating children. Words do change meanings, even during our lifetimes.
Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod) said:
See, all those other pronouns -- xe/xem/xyr, ze/hir/hirs and ey/em/eir -- I think are letting the perfect get in the way of the good. They works.
We're already using they, and have been since long before it became a hot-button issue.
I’m getting used to reading “they” as a pronoun for an individual person. I still think that, when in doubt (or when in danger of being attacked), just use the noun (the person’s name) instead of the pronoun. Mind-reading would be required to determine the preferred pronoun in many cases.
Here's one I heard tonight about the goverment "careening" toward a shutdown. If the intention is to indicate that the government is rushing headlong toward a shutdown, the word is career. Synonyms for careen are to list or to lean or to tilt. Related is caromb, which means "to strike and rebound." I don't think I've ever heard the verb "career" used properly except when I use it myself. When I do, I always follow it up with, "...and yes, that is the proper word," because careen is used colloquially nearly 100% of the time. (For those "transformational grammarians" among you, I'm sure the Merriam-Webster defines careen as to "rush headlong.")
Two other commonly confused words are the Italian word forté (fôrˌtā) meaning to play loudly and with gusto, and the English word forte (fôrt) meaning one's area of expertise. That's another one that's mispronounced nearly 100% of the time and that I feel the need to follow up with, "...and, yes, that is how say it," when I pronounce it correctly.
...every class consisted of nothing else but him reading the textbook to us
This doesn't have anything to do with grammar, either, but when I was a freshman in college I took Music 30, a course called "Jazz, Pop and Rock" (not because I needed the elective, but because I was interested in the subject matter). I was very impressed, not only by the proferror's knowledge, but by his ability to find such a variety of early recording (including a 1914 pressing of a piano roll actually played by Scott Joplin). About a year after I completed the course, I discovered that all of the recording came from The Simithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz and his lectures were the liner notes.
The word “decimate” means (or used to mean) the death of 10% of a group of people.
Whenever I hear someone misuse the word decimate I say, "Wow, good thing they weren't obliterated."
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Strictly speaking, "decimate" meant to select every tenth person from a group and kill them.
The Cambridge Dictionary says:
to go forward quickly while moving from side to side:
The driver lost control of his car when the brakes failed, and it went careening down the hill.
Merriam-Webster says:
Careen and Career
Some people might be confused by the warning to not confuse careen and career, because the most common sense of career ("a profession") is not much like any of the meanings of careen. But when employed as a verb, career does have some semantic overlap with careen; both words may be used to mean "to go at top speed especially in a headlong manner." A car, for instance, may either careen or career. Some usage guides hold, however, that the car is only careening if there is side-to-side motion, as careen has other meanings related to movement, among which is "to sway from side to side."
(I think the government, courtesy of the least reasonable among us, could be swaying from side to side as well)
Years ago, when I still lived in St. Louis, the state of Missouri had just chosen a new license plate design which didn't meet with universal approval. The Post-Dispatch printed a smattering of letters commenting on the new design. One man opined something to the effect that some states' plates "literally reach out and grab you." He didn't identify those states, but I would have made a point not to drive through them. Still, that's something I would like to see.
More recently, my manager at work called in sick one day. When she returned, she explained that she "literally felt shitty." I told her she was oversharing.
I have a thing about the word "transpire," which is useful in discussing things once unknown but subsequently acknowledged. Too many writers use it as an uppity synonym for "happen." We don't need other ways to say "it happened." Turning a unique, useful word into a substitute for a common one just so you can sound like Howard Cosell talking to himself is a bad idea.
It really killed me when an editor changed my own use of "transpired" into "happened." In addition to insulting my vocabulary, he ruined the point of the sentence.
Speaking of Howard Cosell:
Years ago he was very popular. A wax museum came up with a figure of him.. I wish I could attribute this, but someone said it was the only one with a wick on top.
I have a thing about the word "transpire," which is useful in discussing things once unknown but subsequently acknowledged. Too many writers use it as an uppity synonym for "happen." We don't need other ways to say "it happened." Turning a unique, useful word into a substitute for a common one just so you can sound like Howard Cosell talking to himself is a bad idea.
This is the sort of thing I love to learn. I've never used the word transpire much, but when I have, I'm sure it was as a synonym for "happen". I did not know the word had a specific definition, but now that you've taught me it does, I will use it correctly from here on in.
That's what makes me different than other folks. When I learn that I have been using a word incorrectly, I immediately course-correct myself. Yet, with 90% of people, the conversation would go something like this:
"You use the word enormity here to mean "largeness". That's not what it means."
"That's what I always thought it meant. I don't have to change it."
Words have precise meanings, meant to describe specific things. If that weren't so, we wouldn't need aqua, indigo, cyan, azure, turquoise, or teal---we'd only have to say "blue".
Thank you, Mr. Mankowski, for educating me on transpire.
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