FFS, if I hear one more retarded person say that they did something “on accident” I’m going to… going to… going to… well, let’s just say there will be .45 ACP rounds flying in all directions.
It’s “BY accident”.
“BY accident”.
“BY accident”.
Aaaargh. And it’s too early for a drink, even for me. Gawd knows what my mood will be like by Whisky O’Clock.
Tread very carefully in Comments…
I automatically correct anyone that says that…it’s become a habit. Some view it as a bad habit, but tough…live with it.
Same thing goes for ‘should of, would of, could of’. It’s HAVE I insist, often to deaf ears. Just because the contraction may sound similar, it’s still pure linguistic laziness.
Lighten up. They probably just said it on accident. >:-]
I’ve never heard that – it must be a Brit thing.
Oh no, it’s a Murkin thing. I even heard a newscaster say it on TV…
Newscasters, faugh! The vast majority of them are barely literate.
Have you heard different to instead of different than?
Both drive me fucking crazy. It’s different FROM.
“Than” is used to display variance in dimensions: lesser than, greater than, longer than, fatter than, dumber than, etc.
One differentiates one thing FROM another.
I warned you guys not to get me started…
Seems to me you could use to sit down for a long read of THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by Mencken. Still, I’m told, the go-to book(s) for experts in the field. Pretty good for a man who never went to college.
Well, for all intensive purposes they are one in the same, so it’s a mute point, irregardless.
It’s people like you to who I have the utmost scorn.
Kim – Sadly to correct you, but it should be “to whom”; a pet peeve of mine.
Actually, it’s “FOR whom”…
Gotcha.
MOOT point.
I’ll admit my biggest problem is Affect vs Effect.
Hey, me tu!
Well, I’ll try to be careful, but I consider it a win if they get “loose” and “lose” correct.
Besides, how do you suppose Latin morphed into today’s modern romance languages.
One of the most inexplicable language errors I see on the internet is the transposition of “sell” and “sale.”
Check your local Craigslist or similar and count the number of times you’ll see ads that say things like “I need to sale my 1995 Chevy Silverado” or “I have some construction materials for sell.” (The former is much more prevalent than the latter but I’ve seen both, often in the same ad. Yes, I’ve seen ads that say things like “I have this item for sell, I need to sale it by this weekend.”)
When people transpose or misuse homonyms, it’s easy to understand. After all, two, to and too all SOUND the same. Ditto for their, there and they’re.
But “sell” and “sale” don’t even remotely sound alike, and it’s not like they’re difficult words to spell.
Almost as bad as morons who say they are going “to Hospital” or “to University”.
That’s an Aussie and Canadian thing that they must have caught from the Brits. It’s more of a colloquialism than mistake.
How about “I could care less”?
Well that’s just an admission that you do care, at least a bit.
But yes, it should be “I couldn’t care less”.
Weird Al did an entire song on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
“I could care less” is just taken out of context, or inappropriately abbreviated.
“I could care less, but that would take effort, so meh.” Implicit in this is fact that the object being cared, or not cared about is simply not worth changing the level of care over, having therefore to settle for the default level of care one might feel for a rock, or a dog poop one avoided stepping on.
Having efforted this phraseological explanatory, I depart.
Thank the NEA and Dr. Spock for the enstupidation of at least two generations of Americans.
I stopped taking my newspaper after too many of the above errors and my pet peeve – “The goods arrived in tact.”
WTF is “tact” to them? A place, a new motor vehicle? And don’t get me started on the constant misapplication of “site” and “sight”. These are journalists, for heaven’s sake, college graduates, not engaging in casual conversation, but writing for a living!
The other day I was talking to a young man, just out of high school, about bucket lists, and said I regretted not having seen a sequoia or giant redwood.
He gave me a blank look. He had no idea what they were.
*spit*NEA*spit* Dept of Education*spit*
Oh, hell, cut the kid a break. I’ll grant I know a trash heap of unrelated facts about Our National Parks, but that’s because in the 1970’s, when a teacher wanted a quiet period, she (or he) trotted out a film on them. Films with more substance (like the Bell Telephone series) were expensive by comparison.
I have to say that I sometimes wonder what kind of ‘educational’ films are used as class-pacifiers today, but while they probably aren’t better, they probably aren’t any LESS substantive.
OTOH, spitting on the NEA is too little. I say, give the union officers a ten hour head start and then declare open season, no bag limit.
Heh. On a generous day, I might give the NEA officers a ten step head start, nothing more.
I damn sure did cut the kid a break; I liked him for his curiosity and had a delightful chat with him. I was angry at his teachers and the social climate that left him so parochial that he had no general knowledge of the bigger world about him; he was black yet could not name a country in Africa and seemed not to have even a smidgen of knowledge about biggest, fastest, oldest, etc. stuff in the world. I wanted to take him home and tutor him, but I doubt his parents would approve nor could I do it in an afternoon.
How about “Accidentally”?
That’s a good question. I usually use that word, but now I’m wondering if I’ve been in error for decades. One thing’s for sure: “on accident” never sounded correct to my ear; it reminds me of how a child might speak.
My two favorites are “heighth” and “Have a bless’d day”. It’s *blessED”, morons! Two syllables, not one!
How about people who say they’re going somewhere and ask if you want to “go with”?
Go with who?
When did that become correct?