It's not "10 year anniversary"!!

[Memberofstaff]

It's 10th anniversary. Anniversary means yearly. Does my head in. Ditto PIN number.

You must have a very anxiety inducing head, honestly not something I can get worked up about, but there’s a whole pedants section where you’ll find like minded people and many threads that I will never open.

Who cares?

Really ? What a weird thing to get irritated about have you wandered out of pendants corner by accident

Can’t see any one in really life being remotely bothered by this.

And 10 and 10th or should that be tenth ? Anyway they are interchangeable. So it doesn't matter.

Zzz

An anniversary doesn't have to be yearly so you're getting upset about nothing.

Anniversary literally means “year turning/changing”, @didntlikeanyofthesuggestions! An anniversary is by definition annual although I concede some people do celebrate 6 month or 3 month or whatever anniversaries. 🙄 If that is what they mean they would need to add a qualifier to change the meaning of anniversary and clarify that they don’t mean an annual event. It would be somewhat of an oxymoron though…

I can’t get worked up about the redundancy of X year anniversary though. 😂

This would bother me, but people who say “3 month anniversary” can get to fuck.

You are wrong.

😂

one of my dc is madly in love and they are always celebrating some anniversary or other ! I try and not let my eyes roll out of my head 🙄😀

Nope, you need to be able to distinguish between the literal translation of words and what they are actually used to mean.

When somebody goes for a job interview do you insist they wear a white toga? Because that's what "candidate" means in Latin. If they get the job do you insist they spend their first pay packet on salt? Because "salary" means salt money. When you say someone is "nice" do you mean they are ignorant? Again.... Latin.

Words may have their roots in Latin but the meaning changes and nowadays anniversary doesn't have to refer to an annual event. Language is about communication. Gatekeeping and insisting people follow outdated rules just makes communication harder and reeks of snobbery and one-upmanship.

Pretty sure we all get wound up by things other people wouldn't even notice. It's human nature. I can't stand the fact you can't open windows on many UK trains for example 😅

Let's just accept that everyone's different and be a bit more accepting of each other.

@didntlikeanyofthesuggestions Gatekeeping and insisting people follow outdated rules just makes communication harder
But allowing people to make up their own rules hardly makes communication easier. I accept that language needs to be allowed to change, but I regret it when the changes introduce confusion. For example these days I never know what someone means by 'disinterested'. Changes like that make us all poorer because we lose the ability to get an unambiguous message across. It's nothing to do with snobbery or one-upmanship.

It gets a bit confusing, though, if some people use the usual meaning of the word and some decide it actually means something else.

Anniversary, as PP pointed out, means relating to a year or years. That is what it is actually used to mean. If you decide that you prefer to use it in relation to some other time period and that's what it's 'actually used to mean' - by you, that's up to you. But don't be surprised if people misunderstand or complain, or laugh at you.

It’s not just the literal translation, the dictionary definition of anniversary is the annual recurrence of a date on which something happened. Colloquially, people do use it to for different time periods but always with a qualifier eg 3 month anniversary.

@didntlikeanyofthesuggestions anniversary literally does mean yearly

*pedants'
*like-minded

Where is this "pendants corner" of which you speak?

Wrong.

I am feeling unwell and just got snot everywhere while laughing at this 😂 (sorry for talking about snot).

You need to get a life. PIN number irritates you? Seriously. And as @didntlikeanyofthesuggestions says language is a form of communication and evolves, people don't always use the word anniversary to mean annual.

I can't say that this one bothers me particularly, but other things do. You might want to look in to Pedants' Corner. It's part of MN.

Check again.....

anniversary
noun
an·ni·ver·sa·ry ˌa-nə-ˈvərs-rē
-ˈvər-sə-

pluralanniversaries
1
: the annual recurrence of a date marking a notable event
a wedding anniversary
broadly : a date that follows such an event by a specified period of time measured in units other than years
the 6-month anniversary of the accident

The dictionary definition does include the broader use of the word not just annual events. The original post was about people saying "10 year anniversary". If someone used that phrase we would all know exactly what they meant, they would be communicating clearly. There would not be a problem.

Yes, you are correct.
But since everyone knows what your two examples mean, whether they say pin or pin number or the anniversary thing, then I'd argue it's doing what it's supposed to. Giving information in a way everyone understands.

I do get it though. I used to get my knickers in a twist about people saying less when it should be fewer, for example.

Then I entered my No Fucks Given years and stopped giving a shit what people said or how they said it and now my life is much more relaxing.