What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
Discreet vs Discrete used to crack me up on dating sites. All those guys looking for discrete hookups - which kind of makes sense but I am sure is not what they meant.
I literally ground my teeth today because I got an email from a customer service person saying "You're package was returned to us". Not a phishing email with an intentional misspelling, a legitimate email for a real order I made. If it is your JOB to send messages like this they ought not have misspellings.
So the context matters to me. I am more tolerant of spelling errors and mis-phrasing in everyday life than in a professional communication.
Also, the vanishing use of countable quantities: they are all amounts nowadays.
About 1 in 3 posters here say “loose” when they mean “lose”
Using "racking" instead of the correct "wracking" in "wracking my brain". Not very common, but it annoys me... But not as much as "could of"... That is the worst, just stop it!
This is online and in person in Canada.
Aisle. As much as I would love to take a boat to the breakfast food isle (a.k.a. island), I'm pretty sure that I need to look in the breakfast aisle at the grocery store.
Idk if this counts as a phrase, but on the internet, people talk about their pets crossing the rainbow bridge when they die. That's not how the rainbow bridge poem goes. Pets go to a magnificent field when they die. They are healed of all injury and illness. When you die, they find you in the field and you cross the bridge together. It's much sweeter the way it was written than the way people use it.
On accident, it is by accident. 🤬
Those mis-stated phrases are called eggcorns. They’re a fascinating contributor to the evolution of language.
The term egg corn (later contracted into one word, eggcorn) was coined by professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003 in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a group blog for linguists.[5] In his article, Liberman discussed the case of a woman who had used the phrase egg corn for acorn, and he noted that this specific type of substitution lacked a name. Pullum suggested using egg corn itself as a label.[6]
Online in general: using "reductio ad absurdum" as a fallacy.
It's a longstanding logical tool. Here's an example of how it works: let's assume you can use infinity as a number. In that case, we can do:
∞ + 1 = ∞
And:
∞ - ∞ = 0
Agreed? If so, then:
∞ - ∞ + 1 = ∞ - ∞
And therefore:
1 = 0
Which is absurd. If we agree that all the logical steps to get there are correct, then the original premise (that we can use infinity as a number) must be wrong.
It's a great tool for teasing out incorrect assumptions. It has never been on any academic list of fallacies, and the Internet needs to stop saying otherwise. It's possible some other fallacy is being invoked while going through an argument, but it's not reductio ad absurdum.
"If worse comes to worst..."
In British English, they often say the phrase as "if worst comes to worst," which is based on archaic grammar.
In the US, there's a mix of verb tenses. The only one that make sense in this day and age is "if what is worse comes to be the worst," or "if worse comes to worst."
This point can be argued, but I will be severely wounded (maybe not so much as dying) defending this hill.
"per se" (US) - people generally use it as "exactly" or "specifically", e g. "It's not circular, per se, more like a rounded rectangle". However, it actually means "in and of itself". I have a coworker that misuses this one constantly (and also spells it incorrectly) and it's become a huge pet peeve.
The only one that continues to bug me is using "an" instead of "a" before a word that starts with a consonant sound. I especially dislike the phrase "an historic" (as in "it was an historic victory") which has bafflingly been deemed acceptable. Unless you're a cockney, it should be "a historic". The rule is to use "an" if the word starts with a vowel sound, and "a" otherwise. IMO.
What entitlement means vs false sense of entitlement.
I tell people they are entitled to their rights and have an entitlement to their social security money for example, and they get offended thinking I mean "false sense of entitlement" instead.
i feel like we should be able to beat the living shit out of people intentionally spreading political misinformation.
Like im sorry, this may not meet instance rules, or whatever, but like, holy fuck, the amount of shit you can just lie about, without people asking question, kneecaps should've happened years ago, what the fuck are we doing bro.
I really hate it when us media uses the word "ouster".
For example:
"Vail Resorts shareholder calls for ouster of CEO, CFO and Rob Katz"
They mean to use the word here as "removal", but "oust" is also a verb and "ouster" would be "one who ousts".
So, calls for the ouster of the CEO/CFO to do what?
"The proof is in the pudding."
The actual phrase is: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won't know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.
"The proof is in the pudding" doesn't mean anything.
Coming from the other direction - when someone ackshullys a parson, but the person was using the phrase correctly.
I had to explain to someone online today that "liminal space" had multiple meanings, and it didn't only refer to spaces you transition through, and the spooky "liminal space aesthetic" is a valid and coherent use of the word "liminal" and the term "liminal space"
The "positive anymore" is a vile grammatical abomination spawning from the Midwest US.
Normally using the word anymore has a negative tone to it (I don't eat meat anymore) . Except when used in this manner which seems to be when they should instead be saying currently or nowadays.
I find it viscerally unappealing.
Having made some of these mistakes, I tend not to be rigid about them. But here are some fun ones.
- on line vs in line
- to graduate vs to be graduated
- antivenom vs antivenin
All of the above have been normalized, but at one time was not.
Another quirk, we used to not call former Presidents President So and So. We used to call them by their highest position before president. So it would be Senator Obama and not President Obama.
In American English:
I left them know
I'm just leaving you know
No, no, a thousand times no!
You LET them know. You're just LETTING me know.
Also, they were driving and hit the breaks. Their car needed new break pads.
Just letting y'all know, it's BRAKES that stop a vehicle.
If the vehicle breaks, it'll stop, but that's not the system built into the car that makes it stop on purpose at the press of a pedal.
You don't feel "nauseous" you feel "nauseated".
EDIT: TIL "nauseous" can be used in place of "nauseated". This usage has been common since the 20th century.
"If" with nothing before it after it. If you'll call me back... That means nothing! If you call me then we can talk. I would appreciate it if you would call me back.
"addicting"
Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.
Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.
Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.
FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.
Haha is this a follow up on that one post with the OP writing "back-petal"?
I don't do it that much anymore as I learned to enjoy the freedom of using language, but I recently watched a miniminuteman video where he says pause for concern. which kinda makes sense so it's an eggcorn: something that would cause concern would hopefully also make one pause for a moment.
apparently this is a commonly misheard phrase though this was the first time I heard someone say it.
Across the Anglosphere people seem to use "generally" and "genuinely" almost interchangeably these days.
It's "a couple of minutes" not "a couple minutes". Americans tend to drop it for speed, but it kind of fits with the accent I guess.
As far as Americanisms go, this is my least favourite... They seem to be dropping the "go" from the aforementioned and it throws me right off the sentence every time.
In German:
- "Je X, je Y."
statt eines davon
- "Je X, desto Y."
- "Je X, umso Y."
I learned recently that I was using the word "hydroscopic" incorrectly to describe something that repels water. A hydroscope is a device to observe things under water.
Hydrophobic is what I was looking for.
I only realized I had been using the term incorrectly when I got into 3D printing and learned all about the hygroscopic filaments involved lol. I had and epiphany and realized the mistake I had been making for my entire life. And nobody corrected me!
The vast majority of these issues could be solved if people a) read any halfway-decent book, b) and didn’t choose to remain willfully ignorant. It’s fine to misunderstand or just not know something. We’ve all been there, we’ll be there again. NBD. But to be shown or offered the correct way and still choose to do it wrongly? That’s not cool at all.
People capitalizing Random Words for emphasis, as if they're Proper Nouns.
Also getting 'a' vs 'an' wrong. It follows pronunciation, not spelling; so it's "a European" and "an honor".
itt pedants lose their minds over idioms and dialects, because they think they're done learning things.
