What are your pet peeves re English usage?

That joy dance habit could catch on.

For those wondering... the quintessential joy dance comprises vigorous stomping and extraordinary gyrations as well as delighted yelps and ululations, all actions derived from Highland high spirits of the liquid sort. In contrast, the modern version may be limited to a brisk rattling of the paper, a contented murmur and a call for the refilling of one's coffee cup.

My preference, of course, is for the ancient form.

You saw a ghost through your keyhole?

Tycoon?? My old avatar may have had that look, but this new one is obvious, I thought: a tsunami in a wine glass.

Wineglass avatar is very beautiful, Piffka, though it would bruise a good claret. My favourite wine at the moment is Chianti classico.

oooOOOOooo!

Not nearly peevish enough round here.

I've got one, McT. This morning, listening to the news on the radio, I heard the reporter say, "Needless to say . . ." Suddenly realized that that is one of my pet peeves, people using phrases like that. Seems to me that if it's needless to say, one should not say it. It's too much like the MC who introduces the guest speaker by saying "The next speaker needs no introduction" and then proceeds to spend five or ten minutes introducing him anyway.

Ahhh... still feeling Italianated? I'm glad. The avatar makes me a little seasick watching it. I was trying to get someone... anyone... to be amused by tsunami in a wine glass... tempest in a teapot. <sigh>

I picked up the image from a website by a group called Professional Friends of Wine. If you go there, you'll see that I lost the wine stem somewhere along the way.

http://www.winepros.org/consumerism/glassware.htm

I suppose they were trying to show how best NOT to swirl it.

Indeed you did. Now I'm seeing a teat.

Marie Antoinette, I presume? I cannot vouch for the expertise of that website. Those sorts of champagne glasses are passe, anyway. Interesting that, but even more interesting is that the bubbles in champagne are caused by dust. Get rid of all the dust and there are not bubbles. Sad.

But don't you think it's mildly amusing... tsunami in a wine glass? I am going to be changing this avatar soon. It is obviously not me.

A recent e-mail:

"We should be completing the project next week, for all intense and purposes."

I don't know what's worse, the stupidity of the writer or the actual phrase. I mean, what is the value of 'intents and purposes' in a sentence?

Weeell...putting aside the atrocious malapropism of "intense", what is usually meant by the phrase "for all intents and purposes" is that the writer (or speaker) is fudging. In other words, he is saying that the project won't really be totally completed by next week, only "for all intents and purposes," or -- to put it more honestly -- "as much as we're going to complete it."

but still, it's a redundant cliché really, isn't it - like 'part and parcel', and 'the whys and wherefores'? Just another unthought-out add-on catch-all phrase!

I agree.

Goods and chattels, and flotsam and jetsam, have distinct meanings though archaic.

What about "the be-all and the end-all". What's that all about? Maybe it's biblical.

It does sound like some Alpha and Omega omnipotent thingy.

"At this point in time." What's the matter with "now"?

The be-all and the end-all is not Biblical. It is Shakespearean, from Macbeth's soliloquy while contemplating the murder of Duncan. "...that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this brink and shoal of time, we'd jump the life to come..."

"At this point in time." What's the matter with "now"? " - it's only one word where five will do. any politician not using five words where one will do is likely going to be out of a job quickly (what job ?). hbg

"...is predicated upon the fact that.." = "depends on".

Thanks for the Shakespeare, Andrew. I had forgotten that. I think for poets, we can cut some slack. I withdraw the peeve.

... to Jeff and I


The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and many other ESL/EFL language sources disagree with you on this, Clary. The CGEL specifically notes that the analogy you've made, the most common one given by prescriptive language sources, is "illegitimate".

Most of these peeves are errant repetitions
HOW GRAMMARS OF ENGLISH HAVE MISSED THE BOAT
THERE'S BEEN MORE FLUMMOXING THAN MEETS THE EYE

Charles-James N. Bailey

Consider the possibility that English grammar has been misanalysed for centuries because of grammarians' accepting fundamentally flawed assumptions about grammar and, not least, because of a flawed view of the history of English; and that these failings have resulted in a huge disconnect between English grammars and the genius of the English that really exists among educated native-speakers.

The devel­opment of the information age and of English as a world language means that such lapses have even greater negative import than formerly. But what is available on the shelves has fallen into sufficient discredit for grammar to have forfeited its place in the curriculum, unrespected and little heeded by the brighter students.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

C.-J. Bailey is University-Professor emeritus of the Technische Universität Berlin, having occupied the chair of English and General Linguistics there. He took his AB fromHarvard with highest honors in Classical philology and his PhD in linguistics at the University of Chicago with the only designation available-"with honors." He has other degrees from the aforesadi Universities and Vanderbilty University after studies in Firenze, Zürich, Basel, and Cambridge University. Prof. Bailey is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (life fellow), the NY Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Association of Phonetic Sciences (fellow), the American Linguistic Society (life).