Do you know people who use words and don’t know the meaning of them?! *lighthearted*

[PoshestPaws]

I have a friend and work colleague who do this all the time and I would love to point it out and correct them or ask if they know what the words mean.
It would feel rude and patronising to mention it, especially when I’m not perfect and make my own mistakes!

I sometimes pretend I don’t understand (and sometimes I genuinely don’t) when it’s just a sentence of random words that don’t make sense.

I wondered if anyone else knows someone who acts in such a billowing way and if you feel pensive towards them when they are being perpendicular? Do you take a collateral response or just decide it’s not worth being kinetic over it?

I did overhear my colleague once saying she reads a lot which has increased her vocabulary, I wonder if I should buy her a dictionary and thesaurus for Christmas? 😂

An example from earlier today that inspired this thread was my friend saying “I feel a bit convoluted about seeing Ben tonight, I’m not sure if I want to go out or not”
I just replied “that’s understandable” it really isn’t though!

I know several people who use mortified incorrectly!

This thread has reminded me of some Saturday Morning TV show when I was a kid. The decied to let one of the children in the audience read out something about the Grand Prix - you can imagine how they pronounced it! 😂

If I remember rightly, they even doubled down:

Presenter: It's pronounced gron pree
Kid: Well it says here Grand Pricks!

Just had a quick look but couldn't find it on youtube!

An ex used to say he was "ravished", when he was hungry. I presume he meant "famished".

A friend posted a photo of their “penultimate pumpkin”. I said I couldn’t wait to see the ultimate pumpkin. When I spoke to her, she said she had indeed meant ultimate but thought “pen” meant greater than ultimate and had no idea she’d been using the word incorrectly so I looked it up, possibly on Reddit, to discover it’s a common misconception and I’m picking up on it a lo now!

One of our directors, on Teams (quite a large audience), says ‘without further adew’ with monotonous regularity.

Pacific instead of specific. There was even a TV add that used it.

I used to work in an international college teaching health and social care.

In care settings 'acute' means something that has come on quickly or is happening now and 'chronic' means long term.

So a heart attack is acute, but so are things like cutting yourself while making dinner.

Could I get this idea through to the students? Nope. They would insist acute means it hurts a lot, chronic means it doesn't.

@BillStickersWillBeProsocuted I remember that, she was so confident.

I took a class with a teacher who mixed up ‘module’ with ‘modular’. It drove me insane, moving on to the next ‘modular’. I didn’t manage to finish the course!

I was corrected once on my use of the word ‘veto’. I’d said I bet our boss was going to veto our proposals and he told me I was using the wrong word and it didn’t mean what I thought. I was using it to mean ‘put a stop to / disallow’. I asked what he thought it meant and he couldn’t explain what it meant or why I was wrong. I’m still wondering 🤔 so if anyone knows please tell me!!

I often used to see ‘restbite’ on a forum for carers of people with dementia, but even a fully paid up pedant like me couldn’t get too worked up about it - the poor things were desperate for a ‘bite’ of ‘rest’.

😂😂

It was used in that sense for a long time before it (presumably) came to mean something rude, which I don’t know, but can guess at.

I remember that clip from It'll be Alright on the Night. Here it is around 19.10 in from a compliation programme

Otherwise articulate former boss used to say "I think they're inferring that we can't do that"

Implying, Gareth, implying. We'll do the inferring from what they imply.

Well, she's not the only one : 'exclamation points' are actually called 'exclamation marks' !!!!!!

That’s not even spelt correctly either way! Telling off is scolding and burning is scalding. Sorry, sorry, I know I’m spoiling it…

I was the same as a child, read a lot but never heard the words used IRL. Took until my late-30s to hear "ennui" (thanks Inside Out 2! 😅) and also, rather embarrassingly, "hyperbole" 🙈

I know. It was slightly tongue in cheek…

My donut ex step mum used to use the wrong words all the time. One time the neighbour left for work, he was a pilot and she was always jealous of his lifestyle, I literally spat my drink out when she said ‘oh look at that Nick going out fully dressed in his uniform, looking all smug with his fancy espadrilles on his shoulders 🤣🤣🤣

Am I the only one who has had to google some of the words on this thread to see what they actually mean?

A friend of mine once went into the fishmonger and asked for a pint of prats.

She also asked for a testicle to carry some items home from work.

In British English. I believe it is exclamation point in US English.

I see/hear it all the time when people probably mean 'horrified'.

Then I apologise, I didn't know that.

Uh oh have I exposed myself as a thicko?! 🐪
He definitely used "discreet"

I’ve just been in a training course where we had an ice breaker where we had to discuss in small groups our strengths and our Achilles heel. We then took it in turns to feedback to the whole group. A good third of participants talked about their Hercules Heel.