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”.

  • shyguyblue@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    “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.

        • MudMan@fedia.io
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          1 day ago

          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”.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          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.

  • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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    2 minutes ago

    I left them know

    I’m just leaving you know

    No, no, a thousand times no!

    You LET them know. You’re just LETTING me know.

    Also, they were driving and hit the breaks. Their car needed new break pads.

    Just letting y’all know, it’s BRAKES that stop a vehicle.

    If the vehicle breaks, it’ll stop, but that’s not the system built into the car that makes it stop on purpose at the press of a pedal.

  • jyl@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    Some weirdos write decades as possessive. Writing “90’s” implies that there’s a 90 that owns something.

    • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      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.

  • brap@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Americans saying “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less”.

    • LGTM@discuss.tchncs.de
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      12 hours ago

      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]

    • proudblond@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        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.

      • Amanduh@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        Idk why hoes mad at you this is the cleverest way to mix up the saying while keeping it’s intent.

    • fossphi@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      Doesn’t this make sense if someone says it in a sarcastic manner?

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      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.

  • LustyArgonian@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    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.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Please state what country your phrase tends to be used

    Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used…

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • hushable@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    As a non native speaker, it really irks me when people mix up “brake” and “breake”, specially among car enthusiasts.

  • viralJ@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    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”?

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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!

    • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      I feel like everyone in the 3d printing community says this wrong. Not sure where it originated.

      • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I mean I can’t speak for everyone but hydroscopic sounds more related to water retention than hygroscopic does.