What are your pet peeves re English usage?

@JTT,

Quote:

This here's the Pet Peeves thread

apostrophes are so pass a

@laughoutlood,

And I was just getting ready to compliment your new look. Maybe you've done a little something with your punctuation? Maybe I shouldn't go there.

1 Reply

@roger,

Thank you roger, my punctuation is as bouffant and comely as the wind.

My pet peeve is obloquy, it's so overused.

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Every time i hear "iconic," i just want to scream . . .

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@laughoutlood,

Quote:

apostrophes are so pass a

No apostrophe required there, though.

1 Reply

@McTag,

None at all, I must be a dire critic.

1 Reply

@laughoutlood,

Or even a diacritic..

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@Francis,

Quote:

Or even a diacritic..

How clever of you, Francis and Laugh Lood, I'd never heard that word before.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

Slyly adopting [adapting??? David] this thread to hopefully get a wider audience...

In the Doonesbury cartoon I saw the word "pose" used like this:

"Your brain needs a pose"

Do Americans really use "pose" when we would write "pause"?

We do not.

David

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@spendius,

David wrote:

R thay "mechanical" ?

spendius wrote:

Yes--according to the Cartesian and La Mettrian materialist perspective which farmerman accepts,
with only a few minor quibbles, through the gates of which I am fond of driving my coach and four.

Stendhal refers to "her machine" in the scene where the fresh-faced young dragoon asks the veteran
how to proceed with the wives of the local worthies in the town to which he has been posted.

As a man who has had a few (brief) out-of-body experiences,
I deem human bodies to be deciduous mechanical vehicles
for the *real* us, perhaps reminiscent of crabs
who shed their shells to grow.

David

0 Replies

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Every time i hear "iconic," i just want to scream . . .

Will u specify your particular objections thereto?

David

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

Quote:

Or even a diacritic..

How clever of you, Francis and Laugh Lood, I'd never heard that word before.

Yes but pompously preposterous of me to proffer dire critic.

What really gets up my goat is the use of two syllables instead of one in the pronunciation of ire dire fire mire tire, that and malapropisms.

1 Reply

@laughoutlood,

It's local accents, isn't it? It all depends. I for one pronounce dire like dyer, no difference. And even tire like tyer, tho' I probably shouldn't.

Quote:

What really gets up my goat

I'm sure you wrote that as a joke. We could start a new thread for colloquial phrases which mean the same thing. Or its opposite:

that really gets on my tits
whatever floats your boat

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Heard on the TV this morning, and I hear it a lot:

"Itinery" for itinerary.

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@OmSigDAVID,

If you know what an icon is, then you'll understand. Iconic is used these days as some sort of intensifier of praise. I routinely hear someone's first music album or motion picture being described as iconic. Not compared to a genre and said to be iconic; not compared to a body of work (there is none to compare to when it's the first) and described as iconic--just described as iconic because the speaker wishes to praise it.

Iconic has become meaningless--rather like awesome was rendered meaningless in the 1960s and -70s, when it was used without regard to whether the product or person referred to actually inspired awe. Same thing with iconic these days.

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@Setanta,

Setanta, you are awesome. Razz

1 Reply

@Letty,

Letty wrote:

Setanta, you are awesome.

In an iconic sort of way

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Darn old girls . . .

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@Setanta,

Well, Roberta called you this, Irish. (I pronounce it stoat)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v55F8ocQ--I&feature=related

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You can keep Nelson Eddy . . . now, Jeanette McDonald . . .

1 Reply

What are your pet peeves re English usage?

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