Making the Curmudge cringe.....

beatlefreak · Post by **beatlefreak** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:23 am

Sharkboy wrote:
"4. "Excellant"- I had never seen anybody misspell this word this way until ebay, and now it seems like this is how it is spelled half of the time on the internet(s).
5. "Definately" is definitely incorrect. "

At least with those words they have nine or ten letters to get messed up. What really irks me on Ebay are the vast number of people talking about the "ware" and "tare" on an item. I cringe every time I see it. It's four letters, people!

BTW, we can't eliminate "irregardless", otherwise we'd have to get rid of "inflammable", also.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:26 am

...and I was shocked and irritated to see "nukular" given as an alternate pronunciation for the other "n" word, when I looked it up online last year.

Is our languages not sacred anymore?

Or are we being misunderestimated?

(I can hardly wait to see THAT one in the Oxford!)

Make my jelly cherry.

How many people confies "to" with "too"? That's only three letters too misremember.

lyle_from_minneapolis · Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:28 am

U meen 'disremember" ?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:47 am

Yeah, that's it. Sometimes I unremember stuff.

OTOH, maybe I really meant "disorder". As in, "that's only three letters to disorder..."

randyz · Post by **randyz** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:49 am

It really bothers me to see how simple phrases are misused until the original meanings are lost. A few examples I've read or heard lately:

"tough road to hoe" - From the original "tough row to hoe". I'm not a farmer, but I know that a hoe is used to create a planting row. Nobody hoes a road. I must ask that everyone refrain from the inevitable hoe jokes...

"jury-rigged" - From the original "jerry-rigged". It was originally used to describe items of shoddy quality or design and dates back to WWII when we fought the Germans and commonly referred to them as "jerrys".

"stick and carrot" - Although this used to describe a method of encouraging movement (i.e. riding a mule while dangling a carrot from a stick), it now refers to either rewarding someone (i.e. giving them a carrot) or punishing them (i.e. striking them with a stick) to get their cooperation.

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:57 am

How about for all "intensive purposes" for "intents and purposes"?

lyle_from_minneapolis · Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:04 am

All intensive purposes??

I love/hate it!

lyle_from_minneapolis · Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:08 am

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/211600.html

Seems like "jerry-rigged" goes back much further.

This site explores the origins of a huge amount of these old phrases like "rule of thumb" and "three sheets to the wind." I love this stuff.

beatlefreak · Post by **beatlefreak** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:14 am

It's all Mick Jagger's fault for singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction".

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:18 am

Notice it's a UK site?

Ever since reading James Hilton's "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" in 1962 (it was written around '36 or so), I had held onto the notion that the Brits were the keepers of All Things Bright and Beautiful when it came to the English language. The Sunday Times' Letters column, with its regular contributions from Country Squires bemoaning the decline of the Mother Tongue, besides being enlightening and entertaining reading, reinforced my notions in this regard.

Silly of me in light of the recent evolution of the Web...now I can read posts from the UK in real time and see the average UK citizen struggling with the tongue just as we do, and failing almost as often.

Could this be, I wonder from our own pollution of the language with our misteaks?

My old company, which dealt in toy ideas, had a CEO who wrote about "consepts", and a VP who spoke of "idiot secrecies" when she meant to say, "idiosyncracies".

She also philosophized that "knowledge is information".

"Jerry-rigged"? I allus thought it was "jury-rigged", as in "OJ".

randyz · Post by **randyz** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:28 am

Mark: Thanks. Very cool website. I somewhat disagree with their take on "jerry-rigged". I've discussed this with my father who was a teenager during WWII. Although there may have been an earlier incarnation of this phrase in 19th century England, the American use clearly referred to Germans as in the popular nickname "jerry cans" for fuel containers.

charlyg · Post by **charlyg** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:32 am

I worked with a fellow who confused perimeter and parameter. All his pc's were "confined"!

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:42 am

"Jerry" was a WWII Brit term for "Germans". Hence "Jerry-can". You'll find it in many films and books of the WWII era.

WWI saw Germans called stuff like "Filthy Bosch"...

lyle_from_minneapolis · Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:56 pm

Wikipedia, if you can trust it, says:

Jerry

Jerry was a nickname given to World War II German soldiers, the German armed forces, or collectively the entirety of Nazi Germany. Although the nickname was originally created during World War I, it didn't find common use until WWII. Other nicknames used for the German soldiers in WWI and WWII were Fritz, Hun, Kraut, and Boche.

I wonder why they came up with "Jerry" in the first place?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:14 pm

Jerry=Gerry=German