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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OVERHEARD TODAY ON THE RADIO: The story was about the new Peppa Pig Theme Park in North Dallas. The reporter said that going to the park "is like stepping into a cartoon world," and then she added, "and I mean that literally." Apparently "and I mean that literally" is the new thing to say when misusing the word "literally." I wonder how long I can keep this up. I'll bet that every day, if I listen to the radio long enough, I can find a further example of someone misusing the word "literally."
With reference to the post that starts this thread:
The ship has sailed on this one.
It sounds odd to people who were educated when we were, but people have been using the singular "they" for generations, colloquially, and it beats the plethora of alternatives that have been suggested: ze/zem, xe/xem, it/its, ve/ver.
And (with apologies to the trans community) many of the people who complain about the singular "they" and find "he" a perfectly acceptable gender-neutral third person would never say "man, the mammal, breast-feeds his young."
No, but they do use the term "chestmilk."
Probably not the people who complain about the singular "they," though.
Never did understand terms like "chest-feeding." Whom does the term "breast-feeding" exclude? They're still breasts.
Probably, these people think the word "breast" is like the three-letter version of the word "teat."
While I've been recuperating from the total knee replacement on my other leg (doing well, thank you; I ditched the walker after ten days and got rid of the cane last week), I've had time to think of various words and phrases under this topic that annoy the hell out of me . . .
Heighth. There's no such word, Yet, I hear it all the time. I'm embarrassed to state that I heard it twice from an educated character in one of my favourite television series, Last Man Standing. I can see how folks commit this error. The noun derived from the adjective wide is "width", so many naturally assume that the noun derived from the adjective high is "heighth", maintaining the "--th" ending. But the actual noun is height, as in "The box is twelve inches in width and fifteen inches in height."
Quote-unquote. As in "President Roosevelt declared 07 December 1941 as---quote-unquote---'a date that will live in infamy.'" That's not only an improper use of the quote/unquote phrase, it's an illogical usage. Quote/unquote is used in verbal speech as a way of indicating that certain words are a direct quote from someone. They are the oral equivalent of quotation marks that would appear in a written sentence (e.g., Edmund Gwenn's reputed last words were "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.") Thus, in spoken form, the quote/unquote brackets the cited words, to wit, Edmund Gwenn's reputed last words were quote Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. unquote. I've noticed that many news figures on television will use "close quote" in place of unquote, and that's perfectly fine.
For my first twenty-five years or so on this planet, I always heard quote/unquote used correctly (if not every often). But for some strange reason, in the last four decades or so, people started adopting the fashion of putting quote-unquote before the cited material in speech. And usually informally, such as "My shiftless cousin told me that he was quote-unquote between jobs." I don't understand this at all, but the ship has sailed on correcting this bad habit. Other misuses in which the ship has sailed past fixing are . . .
Gender. When I was a young man and had to fill out a medical form or a job application, the block to check off always read "Sex: M___ F___" . Now, they almost always read "Gender: M___ F___" . The problem with that is gender is NOT a universal synonym for "sex" (referring to the physical distinction of whether one is male or female). Gender is a grammatical term, relating to the agreement of pronouns with the subject, as in "Bob got fired to-day, and, boy, was he upset." Since the subject, Bob, is male, then it calls for a masculine pronoun, "he". As you can see, gender has a narrow use.
I assume this wider usage of gender , to refer to the physical state of male or female, came about because of some sort of uncomfortability with the word sex. In other words, it's pandering to the twelve-year-old-boy mentalities who would snicker, "Heh, heh, he said "sex", heh heh."
Acronym. I was sorely disappointed to see the high-brow quiz show Jeopardy! use the word acronym incorrectly on two occasions recently. An acromym is NOT a title or phrase reduced to initials. As such, "FBI" and "MPG" and "CGI" are NOT acronyms. The definition of acronym is narrower. An acronym is a title or phrase reduced to initials and those initials are spoken as a word in itself. To wit, PIN and NASA and ASAP---because we pronouce those as words themselves.
Abbreviations such as "FBI" and "DNA" are pronounced by speaking the letters themselves, and they are initialisms---not acronyms.
Centres around. No! Centre, as a verb, means "to place or fix at the centre" or "to give focus or basis". Thus, something centres on. It's specific.
The mistake undoubtedly stems from the related phrase revolve around. Here, the word "around" flows from the defintion of revolve, and is proper. But unconscious confusion between the two has resulted in the improper "centres around".
Head honcho. This is a redundency. The word honcho means "a leader or manager; the person in charge". Adding the word "head" makes no sense. It falls into the same pointless modification as the term "free gift".
Lastly, here's an interesting one: what does one do when the proper pronunciation of a word sounds like one is pronouncing it incorrectly or in ignorance?
I'm speaking of the word forte, as it means "one's strong point or area of expertise". Nearly everyone pronounces forte in this use as "for-tay". That stems from the confusion with the musical term, derived from Italian, as most musical terms are, forté---meaning to play the indicated notes loudly. Forté (note the accent accute over the "e") is pronounced "for-tay". But forte, as in one's strong point, did not derive from the Italian musical direction; its etymology is French and does not carry the accent accute over the "e". Thus, it's pronounced "fort".
The problem here is if someone were to say "My forte is comic books of the Silver Age," and he pronounces it correctly as "fort", the listeners will likely snigger and believe he's a rube for pronouncing the word wrong. I don't worry about such things, but I can imagine a great many would.
Gender is a grammatical term, relating to the agreement of pronouns with the subject...
...and the verb. Although I do still cringe at using the plural "they" in reference to a singular subject, here is how I have decided to handle it. If proper singluar pronoun/verb usage is "He is my friend" or "She is my friend," then it stands to reason that proper usage when "they" is used as a singular pronoun would be "They is my friend." Yes, it sounds wrong, but so is using a plural pronoun as a singlualr in the first place.
What does one do when the proper pronunciation of a word sounds like one is pronouncing it incorrectly or in ignorance?
I've got a solution for that one, too (a solution that works for me, anyway). "Forte" is one that comes up in everyday conversation quite freqently. Whenever I find myself using it (or any other frequently mispronounced word) in a sentence, I always pronounce it correctly, adding "...and , yes, that is the way you say it."
"Right?"
I've mentioned this one before, but this is currently my biggest linguistic pet peeve which I hear nearly every day. Whenever I hear someone being interviewed on radio or TV, he or she inevitably pauses at some point after making an assertion and aks, "Right?" What are you asking me for? You're the SME, you tell me.
I certainly wouldn't bother saying "they is" to signify a single subject. In conversational English, people say "they are my friend" or similar things all the time. "They is" sounds weird & uncomfortable, and makes a big deal out of a pronoun that doesn't need attention drawn to it. IMO, it's overthinking the problem. In most cases, there'll be plenty of other context to show that you're using "they" singularly without changing the verb -- if not in the sentence in question, then in the next.
"They is" sounds weird & uncomfortable...
Indeed. Similarly, sometimes people use "themselves" in the singlular (as in: "They tied their shoelaces all by themselves") although I have heard "They tied their shoelaces all by themself" (which makes more sense to me).
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