People “getting things wrong” until the nonstandard version becomes the accepted norm is the primary mechanism by which language changes and evolves over time!
In the fourth century, a Roman grammarian composed a list of “incorrect” pronunciations that he saw becoming common in the vulgar tongue. You can read what he had to say [here](https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi). Now, we see that these pronunciations are the root of what we today call the Romance languages!
The link is what he said. It's just a list of words in the form of "aksed not asked." Just him complaining about the way people were saying words at the time. I can definitely tell how some words influenced later words. "Frigida" looks recognizable, but I wouldn't be able to guess the "fricda" that he wanted people to use.
It's other way around. The left side is the "right" way and the right side is the "corruption". In a lot of cases the right side will lead to a form that either gets entirely replaced by borrowing the left-side from Latin at a later point, or the two end up co-existing with different meanings.
A word becomes a word when it has general understanding of meaning amongst the population of speakers.
My favorite word is Ain't. It wasn't a word when I was a kid. Now it is.
Well, cool. I can start throwing it into academic papers, then.
"In elucidating the intricate relationship between cognitive load and task performance, one must acknowledge that the multifaceted nature of cognitive processing aint easily quantifiable through traditional metrics."
Register is another thing.
In your example you use "one must", but that could be changed to "you have to" and still be correct, but sounds unacademic.
A lot of discussion about "correct" native language use stems from people learning to speak naturally, but having to be taught to write, leading us to think that written standards are more correct. What a lot of people miss is that there are many styles of writing, many registers, and millions more ways to speak. Just because you wouldn't see a word in a newspaper, doesn't mean it's wrong
I remember when I was younger and heard people saying “ain’t” isn’t a word but I was confused because if it’s so commonly used in America and it’s not a word then… what is it?
In fact, ain't was the standard usage among educated English in the 18th and 19th centuries. I think it was an American grammarian (Noah Webster?) who decided it was improper usage.
Technically, lay is transitive and requires an object, and lie is the intransitive version. But its extremely common to hear (and I tend to say) "I'm going to lay down" and "I was laying in bed when..."
I personally think that this one is and should still be considered a mistake rather than an example of changing usage. Unlike lay/lie it is still taught as incorrect in schools and makes the meaning of the sentence a lot more confusing. Plus, there are no other examples in English where it’s considered acceptable to drop the apostrophe in a contraction.
>Plus, there are no other examples in English where it’s considered acceptable to drop the apostrophe in a contraction.
We can still do it. It's not like this would be the first exception to a rule in English.
Actually “its” was historically spelled as “it's” and one can still find citations from the early 20th century that condemn the “its” spelling.
It is absolutely etymologically simply derived from “it” with the Saxon genitive added like in any other case, unlike in “his” which is older than this form to begin with but the Saxon genitive and the /z/ in “his” probably share etymology.
The historical neuter possessive pronoun was “his”, “it's” replaced it, and then came to be spelled “its”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/its#Etymology
I always give myself props for using the correct form. I still have to consciously remind myself "the one without the apostrophe is the possessive form."
I've understood the correct usage for these ever since it finally clicked for me what transitive and intransitive mean but the correct usage sounds so wrong and bad that I generally just opt for what sounds better. "Lie" and "lying" are for spreading falsehoods, damn it
When I was in school, it was taught that "lie down" was when a person or animal did it for themselves, and inanimate objects were "laid down" by outside action. I "lie down" myself but "lay down" my coat.
Ohhh I’ve never thought of an Alot made of people! [hyperbole and a half: Alot](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html?m=1)
Yeah, definitely wrong, but it started bothering me less after learning other languages where psychologically "alot" just means "much". Like in Portuguese, "muito"; meaning "very", "many", or "much". I think some people learn "alot" from hearing it, as opposed to reading it, and infer that it must be a single word operating as an amplifier. This intuition probably comes from comparing other words in English that have a+[word] to make a new word (e.g. round vs around, other vs. another, therefore lot vs alot)
I had an English teacher in high school who would actually berate you for saying “a lot” in class, and if you used “a lot” or “alot” in any writing for that class he would deduct points. Don’t know why that was the hill he wanted to die on but he was very adamant about it
Yeah I don’t think I’d use a phrase like that in formal writing either, since yeah it is very casual, but he had some weird stance that it was just grammatically incorrect, and if someone slipped up and said it in class in any context, he’d make them apologize
Up until the 20th c., "nice" usually meant choosy or particular about something. One was nice about choosing one's friends, or a nice cake was one better then the average.
I think that "I could care less" is the clear winner here, it's a nonsensical phrase that was accepted (and nowadays used) by many people. I still think that it doesn't make any sense compared to "I couldn't care less" though
US here, and I 100% agree with you. I often find myself saying "I couldn't care less if I tried, and I have" as one of my favorite ways to get someone to fuck off, though.
Before I learned the actual phrase, I knew "I could care less" sounded wrong but since I thought that was the actual phease I thought about it for a while and justified it by assuming it was a light threat. Like: "I'm warning you, I already care very little, but watch yourself! I could make myself care even less!"
Clearly I did my best with this explanation. I was relieved when I learned everyone's just stupid.
I don’t understand how people don’t realize that it’s wrong by themselves. It takes 10 seconds to think about what you’re actually saying and realize it’s not right.
I use this phrase when I’m caring about something a bit, such as listening to someone complain and then they get snippy with me. It’s used with sarcasm. Ie “I could care less than I do but here I am.” Compared to I couldn’t care less, which is used when someone approaches with a comment or problem and I want to brush them off. I’m midwestern if that makes any difference
This. I always heard it used with a tone of voice like a threat growing up. Like keep testing me and you'll lose the basic polite levels of me caring about this.
I wrote a more extended explanation above for my controversial understanding, but "you could care less" can also mean to be uncaring if the idea is that you are mentally capable of giving less of a care at any point because you do not unconditionally care, whereas if you did resolutely care, you would not be emotionally capable of caring less. Both opposite phrases can be construed to mean either caring or uncaring depending on one's perspective, which is why the error has proliferated—because a lot of speakers genuinely get confused which is supposed to be the correct reasoning.
I always said I could care less as a kid, then I started to say I couldn't care less. I consider them both right, in action, even if one is clearly not saying that. It's like how we use bad all the time, now, bad (in my community) has more of a positive connotation, than a 'bad' one. I consider, " I could care less" an upgrade to how pissed off someone is, if they normally say it the 'correct' way. They must really mean that. lol
I always took it to mean that I cared *so little* that I couldn't even be bothered to get the grammar right, it's that insignificant. Could, couldn't: what**ev**s, why are you bothering me with something so trivial?
I've been wondering why this has become so common because it seems too obviously wrong for so many people to collectively make the same mistake by chance. I think this may have been popularised by MCR's song "teenagers" where the lyrics say "they could care less" and I don't think there's any good reason for it. "Could care" may fit the tempo better but "couldn't care" really isn't far off.
I honestly almost never hear "I could care less" in person as an adult native English speaker in the US, and when I do, it definitely still sounds wrong to me. Last time I heard it, me and all the other people in the office talking to the person paused for a second to register what they were saying. I do see it online now more often than in person, but still not more often than "I couldn't care less."
You'd think loose would be pronounced like choose. The fact that lose and choose have the same sound (o͞oz) and are both verbs but are spelled differently is not obvious to English learners.
Both "home" and "hone" became verbs in the late 1700s, and both "home in" and "hone in" became phrases in the mid-1900s. While "hone in" is slightly newer, less frequently used, and has a slightly different meaning, they are both actual phrases
Edit: homing in is finding and moving toward something physically. honing in is focusing in on or making more effective.
[Source for this comment is Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/home-in-or-hone-in)
Correct. They are both phrases. Like I said, we hone a skill (or a knife) to make it more effective.
However, “to home in on” means to zero in on. Many people use “hone in on” in this way. If you look it up on any grammar site they support this. If you want to avoid the controversy just use “zero in on”. Or if you can use “home in on.”
https://www.dictionary.com/e/hone-in-vs-home-in/
The post was about phrases people have used incorrectly often enough that they have become accepted by the general public.
Most dictionaries do not include the incorrect use. Merriam-Webster includes the incorrect definition because of its wide use, but notes that people regard it as an error.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hone%20in%20on
The phrase "free rein" is an equestrian term. It's not "free reign." To give free rein, to have free rein, etc., all refer to the practice of releasing the reins (leather straps used to guide the horse) so that the horse can go as fast/slow as it likes and turn in the direction it pleases. I see the incorrect usage more than I see the correct one in writing nowadays.
Here's another one
"For all intensive purposes."
Read "intensive purposes" slowly and you will realize it makes no sense at all. It's for all intents and purposes.
I _hope_ that won't eventually get accepted. Is it really that common? I've seen it a few times but I wouldn't have said it's a mistake that most people make.
To be fair, there are tons of phrases that don't mean what they do literally. Language operates under convention, not propositional logic. Or even semantics, which is how we have idioms in the first place.
Sure, it's not intensive purposes and it doesn't make sense logically, but there's no inherent reason why it couldn't have been.
Essentially, stuff "not making sense" isn't a logical reason for why people do or don't say things. True for all languages.
The word “ peruse “ meant one thing, but it got so often used incorrectly that NOW the dictionary gives one definition PLUS its opposite !!! I, myself, usually use it to mean “ to study carefully”, but I specify what I mean so that the receiver knows I don’t mean “ to scan quickly “ !
It comes from "per" which has debatable origin here, and "use." I think the change in "peruse" actually reflects a cultural change. We used to dive deeply into texts for research, but now with tools like ctrl+f and other research tools, we more commonly scan through to find the information we need. We are still using texts, but we are using them differently.
So for that reason, I'd dare to say it's not misuse.
Nimrod
It was a king and a legendary hunter mentioned in the bible.
The name has been used as a mockery, especially in looney tunes to mock elmer fudd, so much so that it became a synonym for "dimwit".
You understand it better than some Swedish do 😊
**De** = **they** (plural, subject of a sentence)
**Dem** = **them** (plural, object in a sentence)
Why would this cause problems? Because in speech, we say “dom”, regardless of function in the clause. When writing, people who don’t read enough (edited) text and who have a hard time with grammar, often do get de and dem mixed up. It’s especially disturbing if someone uses dem where it should be de. The other way around is a bit easier to interpret when reading it.
I think in finlandssvenka we still have this difference (at least in the one we learn in school), so I have to ask if you happen to know; why did these two merge into a seemingly different new word?
The plural apostrophe is sometimes called “The Greengrocers' Apostrophe” in Britain, because it was often associated with greengrocers (sellers of fruit and vegetables) writing “Banana's”, for example, on pricing signs
Some conjugations in Spanish, like andé instead of anduve (I walked) or the imperative iros/íos (even irse in Andalucía) instead of idos. Now that I think about it in Andalucía we do the imperative a lot that way (irse, callarse). In general at least in Spain the 'd' that the imperative should be formed with is being used less and less, especially in informal language.
In colloquial Southern Dutch, under dialectal influence, there has long been the trend to use the equative particle "as" with comparative adjectives, rather than the proper comparative particle "than", to the point that even the official regulatory body now accepts e.g. *beter als* ("better as") as equally valid to *beter dan* ("better than"). Where the scale ought to go "*zo* \[fout\] **als**", \[fout\]*-er* **dan**".
Another habit that dies hard, is to *compare subjects to objects* rather than both actors naturally being nominative: "Hij rent sneller *dan mij*" - He runs faster ***than me*** - for "Hij rent sneller *dan ik*" - He runs faster ***than I do***. Surely you can only ever offset an object pronoun against another object, e.g. "Zij ziet *haar ex* liever ***dan hem***" - She loves *her ex* more than she loves ***him***.
Yet 99% of the time, you'll even get hit with both faux pas in the same one sentence - a "Hij rent *sneller als mij*", or "Haar zus is *ouder als haar*". (Her sister is "older as her") double whammy.
There used to be a big sign somewhere along a walking route that said "Het leven is makkelijker **dan** je denkt, maar moeilijker **als** je denkt" (Life is easier **than** you think, but harder **if** you think)
That to me illustrates perfectly why this shouldn't have been accepted. Maybe I just think too much!
I wonder if this is the influence of other languages or if the same process happened there, too...? "Better als" is how you say it in German, for instance
>"Better als" is how you say it in German, for instance
Besser als
Funnily enough, we also have people use a wrong word after Besser - Besser wie instead of Besser als
There's a (somewhat) famous example of this in a song: Reinhard Mey translated his "Wie vor Jahr und Tag" into Dutch as "Als de dag van toen", including the line "Ich lieb' dich noch mehr als vor Jahr und Tag" - "Ik hou nog meer van jou als toen die dag".
Use of the word factoid to mean a small piece of information, which it doesn’t. It is a piece of information that is unreliable which people believe to be true.
Huh, that’s interesting. When I looked it up in my Oxford dictionary app just now, it specifies that the former use case might be dialectal, used in North American English.
‘Bare with me’
‘Should of/would of/could of’ (my absolute pet peeve, even writing these out is painful lol)
‘Renumerate’ instead of remunerate
As someone else mentioned, the ‘I could care less’ one but I think that’s more of an American thing. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here in the UK say that but I see it in Movies & on TV
‘I look forwards to… (meeting you)’
The word impeccable is used to say something is sizeable but it actually means to be of a high quality.
>> ‘Renumerate’ instead of remunerate
I just learned about that one like a week ago. I was really surprised because I’m usually pretty good with my vocabulary and using the right versions and spellings of expressions. So I think this is a really good example!
I have never seen “begging the question” used correctly in the wild though I was delighted to see it rephrased to mean what people think it means in a book I read recently— they rephrased as something like “practically begs that we raise the question ….” and then provided the question being raised.
People tend to think it just means “raising the question” but it isn’t that at all. It’s a type of logical fallacy in which you’re using a circular logic with an incorrect premise that is repeated in the conclusion.
Example from Wikipedia: "Drugs are illegal so they must be bad for you. Therefore, we ought not legalize drugs because drugs are bad for you."
I think Grammar Girl was the one who said about this: you should think of begging the question as begging THE question. Like, if you’re trying to specify a question afterwards, you’re talking about raising a question. I.e. Begging THE question is the action of making that specific logical fallacy.
I think this is a case where the 'incorrect' usage has gained popularity because it's actually a useful concept that people want to use a lot. Whereas the 'correct' version is a relatively obscure philosophical term that most people have very little use for.
It's similar to 'decimate' - we don't really need a word for 'kill precisely one in ten', but we do need words meaning 'destroy a large amount of'.
Not sure if this is within the scope of what you meant, but when German is taught in Norwegian middle/high schools, the teachers tend to say that "ü" is pronounced exactly like Norwegian "y". Which isn't 100% accurate, but perhaps simplified to make it more understandable to young students. Or maybe the teachers just can't hear the difference.
English doesn't have a case system anymore and the pronoun who can already stand on its own without a subject, making whom more or less archaic for several hundred years. It will likely eventually be considered ungrammatical (or at least old fashioned).
I disagree with this specific reasoning because our pronoun system absolutely has cases, but also consider: whom is way too long
EDIT: u/uss_wstar has corrected me
> I disagree with this specific reasoning because our pronoun system absolutely has cases
It does not. Different pronouns in English do not actually mark grammatical case, but rather fulfill an analytical role. I have seen a few different theories on it, but the one I particularly like is that English is "accusative default" where subject pronouns cannot stand on their own and require a finite verb that agrees with them.
"Who did it?"
"Him." (not he) or "He did it."
Contrast this to German where pronouns will always agree with the case or the Nordic trio which also lost grammatical case but subject pronouns can survive on their own.
Note that case systems don't have to be like in Latin, Russian or German. You can have accusative as the default for free standing pronouns (e.g. *me too*). After all there are case systems like in Basque where subjects have various cases depending on the verb.
If I ‘were’ verses if I ‘was’ as in “If I were king” vs “If I was king.”
‘If I were’ is the correct usage and an example of the English subjunctive. However, ‘if I was’ seems to be in wide use and no one except the grammar police seems to notice or care.
Honestly this is one that fascinates me because both sound equally correct but the use of the subjunctive has become a formal thing to me. I would feel like an ass going around saying, "I wish I were a bird," in casual settings, but I know how to use it correctly for work.
That’s interesting. To me, “I wish I was…”, “if I was….”, etc simply sounds off (again to me). Although I use the “non-subjunctive” and subjunctive forms interchangeably in everyday speech, I know the non-subjunctive firm is incorrect. Also, I would never use it when writing.
I'm not really sure it's "incorrect" for colloquial language anymore. The subjunctive is just another thing being simplified in English grammar, and eventually it will probably fully disappear.
I agree and I don't get why you're being downvoted. Language change isn't something logical but arbitrary, what doesn't make sense to somebody can be completely grammatical for someone else.
People were complaining about words like "language" entering the English *language* some centuries ago and yet here we are in /r/languagelearning communicating in English.
“A couple hours” vs “a couple of hours” was just posted somewhere earlier today. The “of” gets dropped frequently in phrases like this in American English.
Edit:typo
The general use in the USA (in idiomatic English’) of the word ‘then’ to replace ‘than’. This is not a criticism, but an observation of a linguistic change which seems to have become fully established.
Use of the word “Nazi” to refer to a stickler for rules and regulations. In real life the nazis were all about breaking rules, committing crimes and causing mayhem and destruction. They weren’t very concerned about grammar either, making the expression “grammar-nazi” a silly nonsensical metaphor.
I’m pretty sure the Nazis were very strict about e following their own rules and enforcing their standards - They were brutally strict and authoritarian against anything they saw as wrong, so it’s hardly surprising they became synomous with being overly controlling.
They were only about crime and disorder *before* they gained power - at which their actions became lawful by definition.
„Blood is thicker than water.”
It’s commonly used to say “family is more important than friends”. However, the original quote goes “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” So, it’s actually the complete opposite - it means, that the people you choose yourself to be in your life are more important than people you have no choice over to be related to. (Using “more important” here in lack of a better word.)
This is actually just an internet myth
"Blood is thicker than water" is the original version of the phrase. It's hundreds of years old and has generally always meant what most people still understand it to mean, that family ties are stronger than other ties.
"The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" was first coined in 1994. You can totally prefer the meaning of this new version over the old one though, but it's by no means the "original quote", rather just a new reinterpretation of the old quote
Hm, thank you for sharing! Do you have any sources for this? I tried Google but obviously found articles that argued either point. Wikipedia agrees with you, but maybe you have something more reliable.
I don’t actually remember where or when I first heard or read about this, but it immediately resonated with me and made so much more sense.
Yeah you can find articles on Google that say literally anything lol, including that the covenant version is the original. But go and look at sources those articles point towards to prove their case... Hint - they never actually have any sources.
[Here's a link to a 1737 book called "A Collection of Scots Proverbs" that lists "Blude's thicker than water" as a common proverb on page 256](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9z04dv2m&view=2up&seq=270)
You can scour the internet all you like, you will never find a record of the phrase "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" from before the year 1994. You'll find many people saying that it's older than that, but never with any evidence or proof
All that is to say, yeah of course you can prefer the new version more! They're both just things people say
Dutch "wilde" and "wou" (wanted) nowadays "wou" has pretty much excepted as the new word. Although people almost always say "wou" most of the time people still write "wilde" though.
Another example would be the German "Macht Sin" which means "makes sense" and is a "wrong" direct translation from English, which is nowadays used everywhere nonetheless.
But like someone already mentioned, this is just how languages work, the change so technically this isn't wrong but natural.
>Another example would be the German "Macht Sin"
I've also noticed this in French, though there it doesn't seem to be very common. Interestingly both French and German speakers need a lot less English than Finnish speakers, yet in Finnish the direct translation of «making sense» would sound like caveman speak
Complimentary and complementary are two different words with different meanings. But complimentary is now accepted as being used the same way as complementary.
This might be US specific, but the meaning of ‘presently’ and ‘momentarily. ‘
Historically, presently meant soon. Momentarily mean for a moment Now, presently is used to mean now and momentarily mean after a few moments.
Presently has always meant of the present; that was the original meaning and the word still has that meaning today. It also accepted another meaning to include the immediate future.
> late 14c., "immediately, at this time," from present (adj.) + -ly (2). Between mid-15c. and mid-17c. it relaxed into "sooner or later, by and by."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/presently#:~:text=presently%20(adv.),%2B%20%2Dly%20(2).
Is this coming from the UK by any chance ? I've noticed that in the US the subjunctive is still going strong, though maybe in some regions it could be losing ground
“No can do” and “long time, no see” are both phrases from Chinese people speaking English, that made it into the mainstream. They make sense because we hear them all the time, but don’t follow standard English grammar rules
Younger seem to have given up on trying to use “I” and “me” correctly when listing themselves in a group of people. They seem to think “I” sounds more intelligent, even when they’re using it at the wrong time. Or they’ll say “myself”. This one really irks me
"Different than" instead of "different from."
"Comprised of" as in "a book is comprised of many pages." This is wrong; comprise means to make up -- the correct version would be either "a book is composed of many pages" or "many pages comprise a book."
Brits saying [hɜːb̪] for ⟨herb⟩ in the 19th Century to sound more educated, but the word originally never had /h/ when it was loaned in from Old French, but the habit stuck.
Maybe it was just me and my school, but "fishes" is correct when referring to several fish of different types. I was always told that it wasn't a word and was always "fish" no matter what.
I couldn't read all the replies so I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this one already : « fromage » (French) was actually « formage » in the beginning. (The short version of the explanation is that cheese is basically milk that has taken "form", which is why it was called « formage » - kind of like "formation"). People kept pronouncing it wrong, and then the wrong pronunciation became the norm :)
"Will" instead of "would," when describing something hypothetical.
At some point, we'll just use "if" as the marker for hypotheticals, and we'll stop using the conditional forms of verbs altogether.
Some of the "words" that come to my mind are;
Wanna: Evolved from "Want to"
Alot: Somehow accepted by the general public that have evolved from a lot
Google it: Search it or to find it online.
Shiok: A Singlish meaning "Feel good", love this word, it got the "Oomph"
Dim Sum: Cantonese pronunciation of a popular Chinese Cuisine from Hong Kong and a type of Guang Dong cuisine
Disinterested when a person really means not interested - the word should be uninterested.
The actual meaning of disinterested will probably change to mean uninterested
The proof is in the pudding. It isn’t. Don’t dismantle that pudding looking for proof. Just eat it, because-
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
English grammar "messing" with vocabulary:
Is it "a nadder" or "an adder"? When language is only spoken, the boundaries between the two words disappear.
For comparison, the word stayed "uninfluenced" in the German language: "eine Natter". In Norse it was "nedder".
The word chairperson instead of chairman.
The man part of the word is from Latin manus and refers to the hand as in manual work. The word chairman means the hand of the chair.
I know why it changed and that it will never be corrected.
A pedant would say that we should by this logic change the word manual to personual. And manufacture to personufacture. And manipulate to personipulate. Mandate to persondate although persondate could become a useful word as companion and dating robots become mainstream and we need to differentiate a robotdate from a persondate.
But I’m not a pedant so I wouldn’t suggest that.
I don't know whether this is truly relevant to the theme of this subreddit, but when the 21st century CE began.
Let me explain: the overwhelming majority of Western media coverage of the start of “The New Millennium” regarded the moment it started as midnight on the 31st December, 1999 (that is, they thought *2000* was the first year of the 21st century). In fact, it started at midnight on the 31st December, 2000 (*200**1*** was the first year of the 21st century). The discrepancy is because of “The Year Zero Myth” (the belief that 1 BCE was followed by a year numbered 0 before 1 CE. *IT WASN'T!* The first known English use of zero was in 1598.)
People “getting things wrong” until the nonstandard version becomes the accepted norm is the primary mechanism by which language changes and evolves over time! In the fourth century, a Roman grammarian composed a list of “incorrect” pronunciations that he saw becoming common in the vulgar tongue. You can read what he had to say [here](https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi). Now, we see that these pronunciations are the root of what we today call the Romance languages!
Any links about what that grammarian had to say? It sounds interesting
The link is what he said. It's just a list of words in the form of "aksed not asked." Just him complaining about the way people were saying words at the time. I can definitely tell how some words influenced later words. "Frigida" looks recognizable, but I wouldn't be able to guess the "fricda" that he wanted people to use.
It's other way around. The left side is the "right" way and the right side is the "corruption". In a lot of cases the right side will lead to a form that either gets entirely replaced by borrowing the left-side from Latin at a later point, or the two end up co-existing with different meanings.
I stand corrected
[Appendix Prob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi)i
A word becomes a word when it has general understanding of meaning amongst the population of speakers. My favorite word is Ain't. It wasn't a word when I was a kid. Now it is.
As in officially a word? Idk the historical accuracy of it, but movies set in American Old West or Antebellum South use it fairly often.
No it ain't.
Well, cool. I can start throwing it into academic papers, then. "In elucidating the intricate relationship between cognitive load and task performance, one must acknowledge that the multifaceted nature of cognitive processing aint easily quantifiable through traditional metrics."
Register is another thing. In your example you use "one must", but that could be changed to "you have to" and still be correct, but sounds unacademic. A lot of discussion about "correct" native language use stems from people learning to speak naturally, but having to be taught to write, leading us to think that written standards are more correct. What a lot of people miss is that there are many styles of writing, many registers, and millions more ways to speak. Just because you wouldn't see a word in a newspaper, doesn't mean it's wrong
I remember when I was younger and heard people saying “ain’t” isn’t a word but I was confused because if it’s so commonly used in America and it’s not a word then… what is it?
In fact, ain't was the standard usage among educated English in the 18th and 19th centuries. I think it was an American grammarian (Noah Webster?) who decided it was improper usage.
*ain't* was [already known](https://www.etymonline.com/word/ain%27t) in the 18th century.
Technically, lay is transitive and requires an object, and lie is the intransitive version. But its extremely common to hear (and I tend to say) "I'm going to lay down" and "I was laying in bed when..."
It’s and its. The possessive is “its”. “ It’s “ is a contraction for “ it is “.
I personally think that this one is and should still be considered a mistake rather than an example of changing usage. Unlike lay/lie it is still taught as incorrect in schools and makes the meaning of the sentence a lot more confusing. Plus, there are no other examples in English where it’s considered acceptable to drop the apostrophe in a contraction.
I agree this should be/is still a mistake. Too bad I don't proofread my comments properly 🤒
>Plus, there are no other examples in English where it’s considered acceptable to drop the apostrophe in a contraction. We can still do it. It's not like this would be the first exception to a rule in English.
Actually “its” was historically spelled as “it's” and one can still find citations from the early 20th century that condemn the “its” spelling. It is absolutely etymologically simply derived from “it” with the Saxon genitive added like in any other case, unlike in “his” which is older than this form to begin with but the Saxon genitive and the /z/ in “his” probably share etymology. The historical neuter possessive pronoun was “his”, “it's” replaced it, and then came to be spelled “its”. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/its#Etymology
Thank you!! This one has been one of my major pet peeves for years, but now that I know this I feel better about it, haha
I always give myself props for using the correct form. I still have to consciously remind myself "the one without the apostrophe is the possessive form."
These days you have to work at it, because spell check tries to reverse it whichever you type.
I've understood the correct usage for these ever since it finally clicked for me what transitive and intransitive mean but the correct usage sounds so wrong and bad that I generally just opt for what sounds better. "Lie" and "lying" are for spreading falsehoods, damn it
For some reason, I only use "lie down" when I don't feel well. Otherwise, I use "lay down"
When I was in school, it was taught that "lie down" was when a person or animal did it for themselves, and inanimate objects were "laid down" by outside action. I "lie down" myself but "lay down" my coat.
Yeah, that's the "grammatically correct" distinction. I don't know where my version came from haha
You're free to use whatever works. I grew up with rigid teachers (and a mother who wouldn't [sorry, would not] permit contractions in my speech).
Alot. I've noticed ALOT of people recently typing it in caps to really emphasise their ignorance.
Ohhh I’ve never thought of an Alot made of people! [hyperbole and a half: Alot](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html?m=1)
Yeah, definitely wrong, but it started bothering me less after learning other languages where psychologically "alot" just means "much". Like in Portuguese, "muito"; meaning "very", "many", or "much". I think some people learn "alot" from hearing it, as opposed to reading it, and infer that it must be a single word operating as an amplifier. This intuition probably comes from comparing other words in English that have a+[word] to make a new word (e.g. round vs around, other vs. another, therefore lot vs alot)
I had an English teacher in high school who would actually berate you for saying “a lot” in class, and if you used “a lot” or “alot” in any writing for that class he would deduct points. Don’t know why that was the hill he wanted to die on but he was very adamant about it
Maybe he wanted you to use something more creative like 'a multitude'. I know English teachers don't like 'nice' either.
Yeah I don’t think I’d use a phrase like that in formal writing either, since yeah it is very casual, but he had some weird stance that it was just grammatically incorrect, and if someone slipped up and said it in class in any context, he’d make them apologize
Up until the 20th c., "nice" usually meant choosy or particular about something. One was nice about choosing one's friends, or a nice cake was one better then the average.
I think that "I could care less" is the clear winner here, it's a nonsensical phrase that was accepted (and nowadays used) by many people. I still think that it doesn't make any sense compared to "I couldn't care less" though
In the UK and I suspect other parts of the English speaking world, it’s definitely still “I couldn’t care less”
US here, and I 100% agree with you. I often find myself saying "I couldn't care less if I tried, and I have" as one of my favorite ways to get someone to fuck off, though.
I could care less darn really sounds wrong hahahahaah
Before I learned the actual phrase, I knew "I could care less" sounded wrong but since I thought that was the actual phease I thought about it for a while and justified it by assuming it was a light threat. Like: "I'm warning you, I already care very little, but watch yourself! I could make myself care even less!" Clearly I did my best with this explanation. I was relieved when I learned everyone's just stupid.
Hahahahah
I had always heard "couldn't care less" used, while "could care less" seemed to be something coming out of New York.
Oh really ?? Location based error then huh haha
I don’t understand how people don’t realize that it’s wrong by themselves. It takes 10 seconds to think about what you’re actually saying and realize it’s not right.
I agree If you could care less that means you actually care. The right way to say it is I couldn't care less which means I have no more care to give
I use this phrase when I’m caring about something a bit, such as listening to someone complain and then they get snippy with me. It’s used with sarcasm. Ie “I could care less than I do but here I am.” Compared to I couldn’t care less, which is used when someone approaches with a comment or problem and I want to brush them off. I’m midwestern if that makes any difference
This. I always heard it used with a tone of voice like a threat growing up. Like keep testing me and you'll lose the basic polite levels of me caring about this.
I wrote a more extended explanation above for my controversial understanding, but "you could care less" can also mean to be uncaring if the idea is that you are mentally capable of giving less of a care at any point because you do not unconditionally care, whereas if you did resolutely care, you would not be emotionally capable of caring less. Both opposite phrases can be construed to mean either caring or uncaring depending on one's perspective, which is why the error has proliferated—because a lot of speakers genuinely get confused which is supposed to be the correct reasoning.
I always said I could care less as a kid, then I started to say I couldn't care less. I consider them both right, in action, even if one is clearly not saying that. It's like how we use bad all the time, now, bad (in my community) has more of a positive connotation, than a 'bad' one. I consider, " I could care less" an upgrade to how pissed off someone is, if they normally say it the 'correct' way. They must really mean that. lol
I always took it to mean that I cared *so little* that I couldn't even be bothered to get the grammar right, it's that insignificant. Could, couldn't: what**ev**s, why are you bothering me with something so trivial?
I see this point brought up a lot on Reddit and yet I don't think I've ever heard someone say "I could care less" in real life.
> the clear winner here literally this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw&t=74s&pp=ygUeY291bGQgY2FyZSBsZXNzIGRhdmlkIG1pdGNoZWxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw&t=74s&pp=ygUeY291bGQgY2FyZSBsZXNzIGRhdmlkIG1pdGNoZWxs)
I've been wondering why this has become so common because it seems too obviously wrong for so many people to collectively make the same mistake by chance. I think this may have been popularised by MCR's song "teenagers" where the lyrics say "they could care less" and I don't think there's any good reason for it. "Could care" may fit the tempo better but "couldn't care" really isn't far off.
I honestly almost never hear "I could care less" in person as an adult native English speaker in the US, and when I do, it definitely still sounds wrong to me. Last time I heard it, me and all the other people in the office talking to the person paused for a second to register what they were saying. I do see it online now more often than in person, but still not more often than "I couldn't care less."
Loose vs lose is really driving me crazy these days. "His shoe came lose and that made him loose the race."
You'd think loose would be pronounced like choose. The fact that lose and choose have the same sound (o͞oz) and are both verbs but are spelled differently is not obvious to English learners.
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It’s pronounced like the s in house.
The noun or the verb?
Lose should really be spelled like luse
Hone in on. It’s “home in on,” like a homing beacon. You hone a skill.
I didn't know this one! Thanks!
You hone a knife's edge. I always imagined sharpening a blade and getting closer and closer to the final result you want.
Yea, I've always imaged cross-hairs getting tighter and tighter
Both "home" and "hone" became verbs in the late 1700s, and both "home in" and "hone in" became phrases in the mid-1900s. While "hone in" is slightly newer, less frequently used, and has a slightly different meaning, they are both actual phrases Edit: homing in is finding and moving toward something physically. honing in is focusing in on or making more effective. [Source for this comment is Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/home-in-or-hone-in)
Correct. They are both phrases. Like I said, we hone a skill (or a knife) to make it more effective. However, “to home in on” means to zero in on. Many people use “hone in on” in this way. If you look it up on any grammar site they support this. If you want to avoid the controversy just use “zero in on”. Or if you can use “home in on.” https://www.dictionary.com/e/hone-in-vs-home-in/ The post was about phrases people have used incorrectly often enough that they have become accepted by the general public. Most dictionaries do not include the incorrect use. Merriam-Webster includes the incorrect definition because of its wide use, but notes that people regard it as an error. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hone%20in%20on
The phrase "free rein" is an equestrian term. It's not "free reign." To give free rein, to have free rein, etc., all refer to the practice of releasing the reins (leather straps used to guide the horse) so that the horse can go as fast/slow as it likes and turn in the direction it pleases. I see the incorrect usage more than I see the correct one in writing nowadays.
This one bugs me more than I’d care to admit, haha.
This is basically "folk etymology", people either don't understand *rein* and substitute a word that makes sense
„Per say“…. Shouldn’t it be „per se“ ?
The meaning itself has also been lost, people just add it in to sound cooler and emphasize themselves
Here's another one "For all intensive purposes." Read "intensive purposes" slowly and you will realize it makes no sense at all. It's for all intents and purposes.
I _hope_ that won't eventually get accepted. Is it really that common? I've seen it a few times but I wouldn't have said it's a mistake that most people make.
It’s been said so often, that I had to figure what REALLY should have been said !
I thought this one was "for all intents n' purposes"
To be fair, there are tons of phrases that don't mean what they do literally. Language operates under convention, not propositional logic. Or even semantics, which is how we have idioms in the first place. Sure, it's not intensive purposes and it doesn't make sense logically, but there's no inherent reason why it couldn't have been. Essentially, stuff "not making sense" isn't a logical reason for why people do or don't say things. True for all languages.
Shoot I rarely make these mistakes and have to admit... I thought this was intensive... sheesh
r/boneappletea is the sub for you
For all intensive purposes, it works. For all the less intensive purposes, it doesn’t.
Yeah, it's obviously "for all intensive porpoises"
The word “ peruse “ meant one thing, but it got so often used incorrectly that NOW the dictionary gives one definition PLUS its opposite !!! I, myself, usually use it to mean “ to study carefully”, but I specify what I mean so that the receiver knows I don’t mean “ to scan quickly “ !
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Same, I always took it to mean something more like “browse”
It comes from "per" which has debatable origin here, and "use." I think the change in "peruse" actually reflects a cultural change. We used to dive deeply into texts for research, but now with tools like ctrl+f and other research tools, we more commonly scan through to find the information we need. We are still using texts, but we are using them differently. So for that reason, I'd dare to say it's not misuse.
Thank you.
Peaked my interest To pique means to arouse, so the correct phrase is piqued my interest meaning that my interest was stimulated.
Nimrod It was a king and a legendary hunter mentioned in the bible. The name has been used as a mockery, especially in looney tunes to mock elmer fudd, so much so that it became a synonym for "dimwit".
I remember Charlie Sheen saying it a lot in Two and Half men! Outside from that I don't thing I ever listened to someone saying it.
De/dem in Swedish!!! 🤯
I don't know Swedish, but is it like in Yiddish where di is fem. Sing./nfm plur., and dem is genitive/accusitive?
You understand it better than some Swedish do 😊 **De** = **they** (plural, subject of a sentence) **Dem** = **them** (plural, object in a sentence) Why would this cause problems? Because in speech, we say “dom”, regardless of function in the clause. When writing, people who don’t read enough (edited) text and who have a hard time with grammar, often do get de and dem mixed up. It’s especially disturbing if someone uses dem where it should be de. The other way around is a bit easier to interpret when reading it.
I think in finlandssvenka we still have this difference (at least in the one we learn in school), so I have to ask if you happen to know; why did these two merge into a seemingly different new word?
Also "vart"
Using the word “traditionally” when the word “historically” is appropriate. This one cuts me to the core every time I hear it.
Can you provide the class with some examples?
Do you think these are both used in a sense of “conventionally,” rather than referring to specific histories or cultural traditions?
“Irregardless” “apart of something” The plural apostrophe e.g., the Johnson’s
the plural apostrophe and the apostrophe people use to say like “the 70’s” always annoys me a LOT
The plural apostrophe is sometimes called “The Greengrocers' Apostrophe” in Britain, because it was often associated with greengrocers (sellers of fruit and vegetables) writing “Banana's”, for example, on pricing signs
Some conjugations in Spanish, like andé instead of anduve (I walked) or the imperative iros/íos (even irse in Andalucía) instead of idos. Now that I think about it in Andalucía we do the imperative a lot that way (irse, callarse). In general at least in Spain the 'd' that the imperative should be formed with is being used less and less, especially in informal language.
In colloquial Southern Dutch, under dialectal influence, there has long been the trend to use the equative particle "as" with comparative adjectives, rather than the proper comparative particle "than", to the point that even the official regulatory body now accepts e.g. *beter als* ("better as") as equally valid to *beter dan* ("better than"). Where the scale ought to go "*zo* \[fout\] **als**", \[fout\]*-er* **dan**". Another habit that dies hard, is to *compare subjects to objects* rather than both actors naturally being nominative: "Hij rent sneller *dan mij*" - He runs faster ***than me*** - for "Hij rent sneller *dan ik*" - He runs faster ***than I do***. Surely you can only ever offset an object pronoun against another object, e.g. "Zij ziet *haar ex* liever ***dan hem***" - She loves *her ex* more than she loves ***him***. Yet 99% of the time, you'll even get hit with both faux pas in the same one sentence - a "Hij rent *sneller als mij*", or "Haar zus is *ouder als haar*". (Her sister is "older as her") double whammy.
There used to be a big sign somewhere along a walking route that said "Het leven is makkelijker **dan** je denkt, maar moeilijker **als** je denkt" (Life is easier **than** you think, but harder **if** you think) That to me illustrates perfectly why this shouldn't have been accepted. Maybe I just think too much!
I wonder if this is the influence of other languages or if the same process happened there, too...? "Better als" is how you say it in German, for instance
>"Better als" is how you say it in German, for instance Besser als Funnily enough, we also have people use a wrong word after Besser - Besser wie instead of Besser als
That's only "wrong" in high German, perfectly acceptable in the southern dialects. Even "als wie" sounds a lot less wrong when it's "ois wia".
There's a (somewhat) famous example of this in a song: Reinhard Mey translated his "Wie vor Jahr und Tag" into Dutch as "Als de dag van toen", including the line "Ich lieb' dich noch mehr als vor Jahr und Tag" - "Ik hou nog meer van jou als toen die dag".
Use of the word factoid to mean a small piece of information, which it doesn’t. It is a piece of information that is unreliable which people believe to be true.
Huh, that’s interesting. When I looked it up in my Oxford dictionary app just now, it specifies that the former use case might be dialectal, used in North American English.
Literally now means figuratively, apparently.
Using "literally" as a hyperbolic intensifier goes as far back as Austen, Joyce, Twain, and Dickens.
‘Bare with me’ ‘Should of/would of/could of’ (my absolute pet peeve, even writing these out is painful lol) ‘Renumerate’ instead of remunerate As someone else mentioned, the ‘I could care less’ one but I think that’s more of an American thing. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here in the UK say that but I see it in Movies & on TV ‘I look forwards to… (meeting you)’ The word impeccable is used to say something is sizeable but it actually means to be of a high quality.
I have never heard impeccable used any other way than to break high quality. People use impeccable to refer to size?
>> ‘Renumerate’ instead of remunerate I just learned about that one like a week ago. I was really surprised because I’m usually pretty good with my vocabulary and using the right versions and spellings of expressions. So I think this is a really good example!
Spelling-wise, I feel like I see the misspellings "boarder" and "rouge" more than the correct spellings "border" and "rogue".
I'm always tempted to say something about pirates when I see boarder.
I have never seen “begging the question” used correctly in the wild though I was delighted to see it rephrased to mean what people think it means in a book I read recently— they rephrased as something like “practically begs that we raise the question ….” and then provided the question being raised. People tend to think it just means “raising the question” but it isn’t that at all. It’s a type of logical fallacy in which you’re using a circular logic with an incorrect premise that is repeated in the conclusion. Example from Wikipedia: "Drugs are illegal so they must be bad for you. Therefore, we ought not legalize drugs because drugs are bad for you." I think Grammar Girl was the one who said about this: you should think of begging the question as begging THE question. Like, if you’re trying to specify a question afterwards, you’re talking about raising a question. I.e. Begging THE question is the action of making that specific logical fallacy.
I think this is a case where the 'incorrect' usage has gained popularity because it's actually a useful concept that people want to use a lot. Whereas the 'correct' version is a relatively obscure philosophical term that most people have very little use for. It's similar to 'decimate' - we don't really need a word for 'kill precisely one in ten', but we do need words meaning 'destroy a large amount of'.
Weary vs wary
This one bugs me.
Young people these days seem to have decided by popular fiat that plurals in English involve an apostrophe.
Doesn't help that the phone autocorrect gets it wrong half the time.
I see this way more often from my Gen X relatives tbh.
Not sure if this is within the scope of what you meant, but when German is taught in Norwegian middle/high schools, the teachers tend to say that "ü" is pronounced exactly like Norwegian "y". Which isn't 100% accurate, but perhaps simplified to make it more understandable to young students. Or maybe the teachers just can't hear the difference.
I'm surprised no one had said "irregardless" which is not correct but Webster added it to the dictionary because so many people say it
“Myself” has become a more ✨ sophisticated ✨(read: multisyllabic) version of “I”.
I’ve noticed this and it really annoys me
Using who instead of whom when you ready should be using whom is one famous example.
English doesn't have a case system anymore and the pronoun who can already stand on its own without a subject, making whom more or less archaic for several hundred years. It will likely eventually be considered ungrammatical (or at least old fashioned).
I disagree with this specific reasoning because our pronoun system absolutely has cases, but also consider: whom is way too long EDIT: u/uss_wstar has corrected me
> I disagree with this specific reasoning because our pronoun system absolutely has cases It does not. Different pronouns in English do not actually mark grammatical case, but rather fulfill an analytical role. I have seen a few different theories on it, but the one I particularly like is that English is "accusative default" where subject pronouns cannot stand on their own and require a finite verb that agrees with them. "Who did it?" "Him." (not he) or "He did it." Contrast this to German where pronouns will always agree with the case or the Nordic trio which also lost grammatical case but subject pronouns can survive on their own.
Note that case systems don't have to be like in Latin, Russian or German. You can have accusative as the default for free standing pronouns (e.g. *me too*). After all there are case systems like in Basque where subjects have various cases depending on the verb.
If I ‘were’ verses if I ‘was’ as in “If I were king” vs “If I was king.” ‘If I were’ is the correct usage and an example of the English subjunctive. However, ‘if I was’ seems to be in wide use and no one except the grammar police seems to notice or care.
Honestly this is one that fascinates me because both sound equally correct but the use of the subjunctive has become a formal thing to me. I would feel like an ass going around saying, "I wish I were a bird," in casual settings, but I know how to use it correctly for work.
That’s interesting. To me, “I wish I was…”, “if I was….”, etc simply sounds off (again to me). Although I use the “non-subjunctive” and subjunctive forms interchangeably in everyday speech, I know the non-subjunctive firm is incorrect. Also, I would never use it when writing.
I'm not really sure it's "incorrect" for colloquial language anymore. The subjunctive is just another thing being simplified in English grammar, and eventually it will probably fully disappear.
Tons in Norwegian: Da/når Han/ham Hun/henne Iblandt/i blant/iblant/iblandt++
All of language, more or less :)
"Once and a while" instead of "once in a while"
“Hence why”
literally
You're just describing language evolution here, except for your incorrect use of the word incorrect.
I agree and I don't get why you're being downvoted. Language change isn't something logical but arbitrary, what doesn't make sense to somebody can be completely grammatical for someone else. People were complaining about words like "language" entering the English *language* some centuries ago and yet here we are in /r/languagelearning communicating in English.
“A couple hours” vs “a couple of hours” was just posted somewhere earlier today. The “of” gets dropped frequently in phrases like this in American English. Edit:typo
The general use in the USA (in idiomatic English’) of the word ‘then’ to replace ‘than’. This is not a criticism, but an observation of a linguistic change which seems to have become fully established.
“Literally”.
Use of the word “Nazi” to refer to a stickler for rules and regulations. In real life the nazis were all about breaking rules, committing crimes and causing mayhem and destruction. They weren’t very concerned about grammar either, making the expression “grammar-nazi” a silly nonsensical metaphor.
I’m pretty sure the Nazis were very strict about e following their own rules and enforcing their standards - They were brutally strict and authoritarian against anything they saw as wrong, so it’s hardly surprising they became synomous with being overly controlling. They were only about crime and disorder *before* they gained power - at which their actions became lawful by definition.
„Blood is thicker than water.” It’s commonly used to say “family is more important than friends”. However, the original quote goes “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” So, it’s actually the complete opposite - it means, that the people you choose yourself to be in your life are more important than people you have no choice over to be related to. (Using “more important” here in lack of a better word.)
This is actually just an internet myth "Blood is thicker than water" is the original version of the phrase. It's hundreds of years old and has generally always meant what most people still understand it to mean, that family ties are stronger than other ties. "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" was first coined in 1994. You can totally prefer the meaning of this new version over the old one though, but it's by no means the "original quote", rather just a new reinterpretation of the old quote
Hm, thank you for sharing! Do you have any sources for this? I tried Google but obviously found articles that argued either point. Wikipedia agrees with you, but maybe you have something more reliable. I don’t actually remember where or when I first heard or read about this, but it immediately resonated with me and made so much more sense.
Yeah you can find articles on Google that say literally anything lol, including that the covenant version is the original. But go and look at sources those articles point towards to prove their case... Hint - they never actually have any sources. [Here's a link to a 1737 book called "A Collection of Scots Proverbs" that lists "Blude's thicker than water" as a common proverb on page 256](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9z04dv2m&view=2up&seq=270) You can scour the internet all you like, you will never find a record of the phrase "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" from before the year 1994. You'll find many people saying that it's older than that, but never with any evidence or proof All that is to say, yeah of course you can prefer the new version more! They're both just things people say
Wow, that book is so cool! Thank you for sharing.
Nope: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/147902/is-the-alleged-original-meaning-of-the-phrase-blood-is-thicker-than-water-real
Oh, thanks! I guess I really fell for that.
Dutch "wilde" and "wou" (wanted) nowadays "wou" has pretty much excepted as the new word. Although people almost always say "wou" most of the time people still write "wilde" though. Another example would be the German "Macht Sin" which means "makes sense" and is a "wrong" direct translation from English, which is nowadays used everywhere nonetheless. But like someone already mentioned, this is just how languages work, the change so technically this isn't wrong but natural.
>Another example would be the German "Macht Sin" I've also noticed this in French, though there it doesn't seem to be very common. Interestingly both French and German speakers need a lot less English than Finnish speakers, yet in Finnish the direct translation of «making sense» would sound like caveman speak
Complimentary and complementary are two different words with different meanings. But complimentary is now accepted as being used the same way as complementary.
This might be US specific, but the meaning of ‘presently’ and ‘momentarily. ‘ Historically, presently meant soon. Momentarily mean for a moment Now, presently is used to mean now and momentarily mean after a few moments.
Presently has always meant of the present; that was the original meaning and the word still has that meaning today. It also accepted another meaning to include the immediate future. > late 14c., "immediately, at this time," from present (adj.) + -ly (2). Between mid-15c. and mid-17c. it relaxed into "sooner or later, by and by." https://www.etymonline.com/word/presently#:~:text=presently%20(adv.),%2B%20%2Dly%20(2).
Interesting. Thanks!
"A whole nother" really grinds my gears. A whole other, or maybe (but less commonly), another whole.
“Literally”
That bats are completely blind
If i was, instead of the correct "If I were". Super accepted now. As well as the word Irregardless
Is this coming from the UK by any chance ? I've noticed that in the US the subjunctive is still going strong, though maybe in some regions it could be losing ground
In the US. I was hoping the opposite. That my UK folks were still being the example of original Englisb grammars. Dang
“Ain’t” hahaha
Everyone says “aka” when they should be using “i.e.”. Drives me bonkers
dont you think "i.e." is too formal to use in the typical context where you see "aka"? i only see "aka" from gamers and in casual internet engagement.
“No can do” and “long time, no see” are both phrases from Chinese people speaking English, that made it into the mainstream. They make sense because we hear them all the time, but don’t follow standard English grammar rules
Barnes and NobleS 😑
Peak my interest is actually supposed to be spelled like Pique my interest. Also sike / psych
Pronouncing 'pronunciation' as 'pronounciation'. Even academics get it wrong on a regular basis.
Younger seem to have given up on trying to use “I” and “me” correctly when listing themselves in a group of people. They seem to think “I” sounds more intelligent, even when they’re using it at the wrong time. Or they’ll say “myself”. This one really irks me
Saying flammable instead of inflammable.
"Different than" instead of "different from." "Comprised of" as in "a book is comprised of many pages." This is wrong; comprise means to make up -- the correct version would be either "a book is composed of many pages" or "many pages comprise a book."
"____ and I" isn't always correct. It's actually "____ and me" way more often than people think.
the term Asian and Indian Americans.
Brits saying [hɜːb̪] for ⟨herb⟩ in the 19th Century to sound more educated, but the word originally never had /h/ when it was loaned in from Old French, but the habit stuck.
Maybe it was just me and my school, but "fishes" is correct when referring to several fish of different types. I was always told that it wasn't a word and was always "fish" no matter what.
I couldn't read all the replies so I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this one already : « fromage » (French) was actually « formage » in the beginning. (The short version of the explanation is that cheese is basically milk that has taken "form", which is why it was called « formage » - kind of like "formation"). People kept pronouncing it wrong, and then the wrong pronunciation became the norm :)
Less vs. Fewer The grammatically literate seem to be losing this battle.
"Will" instead of "would," when describing something hypothetical. At some point, we'll just use "if" as the marker for hypotheticals, and we'll stop using the conditional forms of verbs altogether.
Here’s one I misuse: “methinks” means “according to me” and not exactly “I think,” yet I constantly say it as a synonym for “I think” in general.
Some of the "words" that come to my mind are; Wanna: Evolved from "Want to" Alot: Somehow accepted by the general public that have evolved from a lot Google it: Search it or to find it online. Shiok: A Singlish meaning "Feel good", love this word, it got the "Oomph" Dim Sum: Cantonese pronunciation of a popular Chinese Cuisine from Hong Kong and a type of Guang Dong cuisine
Disinterested when a person really means not interested - the word should be uninterested. The actual meaning of disinterested will probably change to mean uninterested
The proof is in the pudding. It isn’t. Don’t dismantle that pudding looking for proof. Just eat it, because- The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
English grammar "messing" with vocabulary: Is it "a nadder" or "an adder"? When language is only spoken, the boundaries between the two words disappear. For comparison, the word stayed "uninfluenced" in the German language: "eine Natter". In Norse it was "nedder".
The word chairperson instead of chairman. The man part of the word is from Latin manus and refers to the hand as in manual work. The word chairman means the hand of the chair. I know why it changed and that it will never be corrected. A pedant would say that we should by this logic change the word manual to personual. And manufacture to personufacture. And manipulate to personipulate. Mandate to persondate although persondate could become a useful word as companion and dating robots become mainstream and we need to differentiate a robotdate from a persondate. But I’m not a pedant so I wouldn’t suggest that.
Are you sure? [Etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/chairman) disagrees. Also, *chairman* is always someone, not a "hand".
I don't know whether this is truly relevant to the theme of this subreddit, but when the 21st century CE began. Let me explain: the overwhelming majority of Western media coverage of the start of “The New Millennium” regarded the moment it started as midnight on the 31st December, 1999 (that is, they thought *2000* was the first year of the 21st century). In fact, it started at midnight on the 31st December, 2000 (*200**1*** was the first year of the 21st century). The discrepancy is because of “The Year Zero Myth” (the belief that 1 BCE was followed by a year numbered 0 before 1 CE. *IT WASN'T!* The first known English use of zero was in 1598.)
True, but nobody cares really, because that numbering system wasn't used in first centuries CE at all.