What are your pet peeves re English usage?

I have no wish to calm my addictions. Any of them. If I had such a wish I would do more than calm them.

But "addiction" is a complex matter. It is a word bandied about far too much in a pejoritive manner by folk who think their addictions are somehow respectable.

It would shatter my fragile faith in the American system if I thought that Mr Bush used the word in the State of the Union speech in that way. If it wasn't very significant then his speech writing team needs the red card.

Hey Spendy, Set was being pleasant and helpful.

I hate it when you guys fall out, it makes me all moody.

Anyway if you need to drink a half while the barmaid is pouring your next pint, addiction is quite a good word for it.
No disrespect.
I'm addicted to caramel wafers.

Caramel wafers are easy to come off.

It's your addiction to being out of the house that is a bit of a nuisance for the rest of us.

When McTag is abroad, little children skip and play, matrons smile, and young maidens coyly blush. Fellows cry "Well-a-day!"

BBB
Irregardless. There ain't no such word. Its regardless. I was surprised to hear Chris Matthews to say irregardless recently.

I'm anxious to learn. It should be I'm eager to learn . Anxious is if you are nervous, not eager. A Catholic priest once asked me what college I attended. I replied none and wondered why he asked me? He assumed I was a college graduate because I used the word eager. He said educated people say eager, not anxious. I didn't know that but I knew I wasn't anxious to learn.

BBB

A picture that is not at all hard to envision. Along with various fauna gathering round to be petted and stroked.

I'm anxious to hear what JTT will have to say about BBB's post.

I remember being very eager to unfasten the hooks and eyes up the back of Jennifer Whiteside liberty bodice. I wasn't in the least anxious as she was shouting at me to hurry up.

I went slow on purpose and when I claimed that the last one had got stuck she said "Oh--never mind"..

That was before feminists.

I'm eager to hear what MA will have to say about what I might say about BBB's post.

I tend to be in agreement with the Bumblebee. Somehow I have a feeling that you are not. Words do have precise meanings. We misuse them at our peril.

Language, like any living thing, has to be able to survive change--so meanings can change. At the same time, if words don't have precise meanings, understood readily by all the speakers of a language, they fail of the object of language, which is communication.

Teenagers and other members of the local fauna tend to employ words as code (doctors, lawyers, engineers, sewage workers, carpenters--everyone does this), in which the meaning not only communicates an idea, but communicates membership in an allegedly exclusive fraternity, as well. The measure of the usefulness of a particular definition of a word, or of a word itself, is the continued prevalence of the usage. People don't often use square to mean out of touch with fashionable speech and behavior any longer. But network as a verb seems to be here to stay--reticulate seems to have quietly died of natural causes.

What do you think of "village bike" Settin' ?

"Network" is a bit abstract don't you think?

I saw a funny thing in the paper at the weekend, I'll see if I can remember it:

"How many people were evacuated during the fire?"

-"120, but it was the building which was evacuated.
People are normally evacuated by an emetic or by colonic irrigation."

Tonight in a TV documentary about Eric Newby, quite good it was, the narrator kept saying "self-depreciating" when he meant "self-deprecating".

What sort of accent did the narrotor have Mac?

Home counties/ BBC RP. A bit like Jon Snow.

Oops! Thanks for pointing that out, McTag. I would have embarassed myself anyone around here could make the distinction.

They certainly look similar, but sound very different, wouldn't you say?

It sounds worse when you hear it in a broadcast.

I wrote to the BBC once when a woman journalist on their website kept writing "to wet your appetites."

In the south, they say wen, were, wale for when, where, whale, the silly billies, so she'd probably never seen the correct version in print.

You are mischievious.

We expect better from the BBC.

I do, anyway.