Misuse of words

[Speicher]

"May I have a bowl of alphabet soup please?"

Yes, here you are, it's trying to say something-

I C U R A

noodle

 

[cisamcgu]

Pressurised, when pressured is the correct usage.

"He felt he was pressurised to give 110% in the game yesterday"

(I also hate 110% - but that is a different story )

 

[Chrisz]

'Affect' in stead of 'effect' is another one!






(am I joining the ranks of the pedant brigade??)

 

[Arch]

Yes, here you are, it's trying to say something-

I C U R A

noodle

 

[Aperitif]

Yes, here you are, it's trying to say something-

I C U R A

noodle

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOC

Sorry - had to reply in spaghetti hoops..."toast to Speicher"!

 

[Auntie Helen]

On the American vs English thing, some words appear the same but have different meanings. One example is "momentarily" which for us means "in a minute" but for yanks means (I believe), "for a short time" (where we would say "for a moment").

These little differences can be insidious when you're trying to make a specific point (pacific point?? ) and the language difference masks it.

With regard to German words coming into American, there's the reverse happening now as Germans take on Brit/American words as they sound cool. It was particularly noticeable to me in Köln a few years ago when the shop names seemed rather amusing:

And even worse, they're aping our use of apostrophes in names and have included an apostrophe on this café name, even in German!

 

[jay clock]

Quite topical.... but my pet hate is "treacherous" as often used to describe road conditions when they mean "dangerous". Treacherous means it will betray you, so black ice is treacherous. Thick sheets of ice, or thick snow are not treacherous - they look dangerous and they are.....

 

[Dave5N]

Getting back to cycling, can we all please remember that 'medal' is not a verb?

And 'peddle' is to sell itinerantly.

 

[ChrisKH]

But a lot of the stuff which is being imported is recycled German. Don't forget that so many German speaking immigrants went to America that serious consideration was given to replacing English with German as the national language. Not all those German speaking migrants were well educated. Dumm is German for stupid and the nearest English sounding word is dumb which of course means mute. That is how dumb incorrectly came to mean stupid in American. Another example is fresh for cheeky (German frech).

Indeedy. Never straight forward language is it?

 

[dellzeqq]

Orientated. Good grief! Where on earth did this come from. And....methodology. Wtf!!!!

 

[Dave5N]

I have a Director who always says performa when she means Pro Forma

 

[Over The Hill]

Orientated seems OK to me but should it mean only facing East?


What I really hate (note cleaver link) is wind direction.
If I am on my bike travelling north I am going in a northerly direction. A bus going the same way would be the North Bus.
Why then is a northerly wind or a north wind one that blows FROM the north?

 

[Over The Hill]

Oh and people saying "Either" when they mean "both".

 

[Auntie Helen]

Ah, I asked my husband about this because we do a lot of sailing and the wind direction always seems wrong.

He explained it thus: Way back in the mists of time when Mr & Mrs Early Farmer decided to plant their crops they had to choose a good time. Wind direction was a useful indicator of this - east wind cold, west wind warm & wet, south wind warm & dry, etc etc. They weren't interested in the direction in which the wind was going, but the direction from which it came. In other words, East Wind means it comes from the east, and that's all they needed to know. The fact that it was blowing towards the west made not one jot of difference to them as they weren't sailors or cyclists but were static farmers.

Does that make sense?

 

[Saddle bum]

"Noone" is not a word, one is meant to write "no one".

"Shirley", instead of "surely" is another gem.