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”.
“Could of…”
It’s “could have”!
Edit: I’m referring to text based things, like text and email. I can pretty much ignore the mispronouncing.
That’s a dialectal difference, not an error.
It’s very much not recommended, and generally seen as an error. But this article puts an asterisk on it.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-worse-than-coulda
I am viscerally against this concept.
It’s one thing to include the spelling as a way to capture the phonetics of an accent or a dialect, entirely another to accept its use in writing when using a neutral voice.
If anything, because it’s so often just a misspelling I would avoid trying to use it as a phonetics thing just as a matter of style. At this point everybody would think I’m making a mistake instead of trying to mimic a way of speech in a way they’d never do with “coulda”.
With you on all counts.
I mean no? The have in could have is pronounced the same as of, but at least AFAIK no dialect explicitly says could of. Tell the other person to not mesh the two words together and they’ll say have. I think.
Minor nit pick from my experience. If the word is written out “could have” I enunciate the entire word. I only pronounce the contraction “could’ve” as “could of”. And vice versa when dictating.
Not when written
Also they’re/their, your/you’re, here/hear, to/too.
I think they just heard could’ve or meant to say could’ve
Some weirdos write decades as possessive. Writing “90’s” implies that there’s a 90 that owns something.
It’s not a decade thing. People do that anytime they’re not sure if it’s a “s situation” or a “ies situation”, or confusing with some other plural problem.
Americans saying “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less”.
I agree that this is very vaguely irritating, but for me it only differs by one sound and a vowel quality
“I couldn’t care less” [aɪ̯.kɘ̃ʔ.kɛɹ.lɛs] vs “I could care less” [aɪ̯.kɘ.kɛɹ.lɛs]
I care a tiny bit. I could care less, but not easily.
I’ve seen so many attempts at justification for that one online but I can’t help but think that those people just don’t want to admit that they’re wrong.
I say “I couldn’t care less”, but I used to think that “I couldn’t care less” was used in context where someone seemed like they don’t care and they give that as a snarky remark, implying that they can care even less.
I could care less, but then I wouldn’t care at all…
Idk why hoes mad at you this is the cleverest way to mix up the saying while keeping it’s intent.
Doesn’t this make sense if someone says it in a sarcastic manner?
No
Came here to share this one too
I say “I could care less” and then follow it up with, “but I’d be dead”. Correcting “I could care less” is dumb because you literally can care less about lots of stuff, but saying the phrase indicates you just don’t really care.
I also like the bonus “hold down the fort” at the end.
Because as you know, it’s an inflatable hover fort and, once relieved of my weight, it might float off into the sky.
breaked vs broke
Respect the irregular verbs
What entitlement means vs false sense of entitlement.
I tell people they are entitled to their rights and have an entitlement to their social security money for example, and they get offended thinking I mean “false sense of entitlement” instead.
Please state what country your phrase tends to be used
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used…
Touché
Casey Point
This reply deserves to be put on a peddle stool
Discreet vs Discrete used to crack me up on dating sites. All those guys looking for discrete hookups - which kind of makes sense but I am sure is not what they meant.
I literally ground my teeth today because I got an email from a customer service person saying “You’re package was returned to us”. Not a phishing email with an intentional misspelling, a legitimate email for a real order I made. If it is your JOB to send messages like this they ought not have misspellings.
So the context matters to me. I am more tolerant of spelling errors and mis-phrasing in everyday life than in a professional communication.
they ought not have misspellings
Wouldn’t it be “ought not to”?
Why no! In the negative (ought not) you don’t need the to.
Neat. That gives me old British author vibes
I forget
You forgor 💀
A whole nother.
Alright (as one word instead of two).
Also USA.
Never thought of the idea of “alright” being an issue. I can see why it makes sense, it’s obviously derived from “all right”, though funnily enough that never occurred to me because I’ve always just thought of it as a word in its own right and never pondered its derivation.
So do you also “all ready” and “all though” and “all ways”? That just seems weird.
No, that’d be silly.
Alright, how do you explain this?
They are free to be wrong. I’m free to be pedantic about things that don’t matter to other people.
It’s aight.
Infixes are present in many languages, although English tends to use them mainly for expletives. Another example would be: “Leave me a-fucking-lone!”
I will die on the alright hill. I have already committed to it, and I have had altogether too much of pedantic prescriptivists /s
But in all seriousness, I use and support “alright” and will never, ever stop using it. But I support your right to be wrong about how language actually works ;)
Meh, we can disagree over beers. I have no qualms with people talking.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alright
It’s in Merriam-Webster.
Alright and all right have different meanings to me.
Alright is either a exclamation (“Alright!”) or a synonym for “okay”. (“Everything is going to be alright”)
All right is means all correct. (“The answers were all right”.)
In German:
- “Je X, je Y.”
statt eines davon
- “Je X, desto Y.”
- “Je X, umso Y.”
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.
Can you give an example
“Everything is expensive anymore”
It’s gross, I know.
Gosh, I had no idea this was happening.
I envy you.
As a non native speaker, it really irks me when people mix up “brake” and “breake”, specially among car enthusiasts.
Every time I try to slow down my car, I hear chopped up and recontextualized Amens…
I’m not entirely against it, but I’m amused by how common it is to put “whole” inside of “another”, making it “a whole nother”. Can anyone give any other use of the word “nother”?
I learned recently that I was using the word “hydroscopic” incorrectly to describe something that repels water. A hydroscope is a device to observe things under water.
Hydrophobic is what I was looking for.
I only realized I had been using the term incorrectly when I got into 3D printing and learned all about the hygroscopic filaments involved lol. I had and epiphany and realized the mistake I had been making for my entire life. And nobody corrected me!
I feel like everyone in the 3d printing community says this wrong. Not sure where it originated.
I mean I can’t speak for everyone but hydroscopic sounds more related to water retention than hygroscopic does.
“Touch base”
No, you cannot touch base with me; I’m not into that. Go touch your own base, base toucher.
The idiom relies on a person being familiar with baseball, but even then it makes very little contextual sense.
All your base are touched by us.
Good touch or bad touch?
Oh, baseball! That makes much more sense.
For some reason I had assumed it came from tabletop gaming, where your model’s base much touch another player’s base in order to whisper to them
Lol, tabletop gaming is far too niche to be the progenitor of so widespread a term
It makes total sense if you are familiar with baseball.
Touching base is something you need to be sure you do. Not only while running bases, but also when tagging up after a dead ball or a caught fly.
It happens regularly and, therefore, it is generally nonchalant. But it must be done; it must be remembered and kept up with.
No, it makes little literal sense. How much sense it makes contextually depends on the usage.
