'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

JillS_2

spandit wrote: »

don't you mean:
cee, eff, ell, em, en, ar, es, you, double you, ex, why
(ar and es are commonly used in Scrabble).

I didn't but perhaps I will in future.

MrGumby

cse wrote: »

Last night's Masterchef reminded me of another one - 'amateurs' and 'ammeters'. Grr...

Ammeters...close relations to beefeaters.

MrGumby

northerner60 wrote: »

...none of her contempories did.

Contemporaries!

MrGumby

samizdat wrote: »

Oh, yes, I forgot, I have a good one for you all.

"One of the best" should in fact be "one of the better".

How many can say that they always get that one right?

Don't be silly. Both are correct; it just depends how many are being compared. 'Best' is the comparative form (used if there are only two things), best the superlative (when there are more than two).

MrGumby

And then there's advance vs. advanced.

I hate road signs saying 'Advanced warning of road works' when they should read 'Advance warning'. Advanced means 'clever', advance means 'ahead of time'. It isn't quite that simple, but that's what it amounts to. Even TomTom sat nav gets it wrong when their menu says 'Advanced planning' (planning a route in advance of the journey).

pollypenny

We've had so many of these language threads on The Arms and on DT. Those of us who object to careless use of language are pilloried as pedants.

More people in the media need to speak up for correct language.

dander

Can't believe no-one has mentioned the one that drives me insane - and that's the use of ignorant to mean rude. I can only assume that these people are shooting for insolent, but are too ignorant to get there.

And just a London thing, but I want to cry when I hear the L pronounced in Holborn.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

I have not read through the thread so this may have been mentioned. My own gripe is more general - i.e. the demise of the adverb. Even some very well spoken television presenters seem to omit -ly from the end of some words when they clearly should be there. The misuse of apostrophes is a source of irritation too. Although I didn't read it myself, a national paper apparently referred to John Major's "Citizen's Charter" some years ago. Some were going around wondering who the lucky person was . N.B. It wasn't me.

tiggywinkle31

And another thing! You must borrow FROM someone, not off them, as it was never on them in the first place, and lend TO someone for the same reason.

MrGumby

pollypenny wrote: »

We've had so many of these language threads on The Arms and on DT. Those of us who object to careless use of language are pilloried as pedants.

More people in the media need to speak up for correct language.

I couldn't agree more. I don't mind language evolving (would we want to be speaking Elizabethan or even Victorian English?) but, when English, arguably the richest language in the world, becomes impoverished or loses accuracy, that's a different matter.

And so to another pet hate (I speak as one who accepts the occasional use of 'And' to start a sentence). Awesome.

The 'awesome' phenomenon hit the States several years ago and I was dreading its arrival here. Awesome should mean 'hugely impressive, inspiring awe'. It's hard to imagine that anything could be more impressive than something described as awesome, and yet now it is applied to anything vaguely interesting. How sad.