Annoyingly misused words/phrases

[Echobelly]

I saw a listicle about 'Nepo babies' of famous people who looked just like their parents, when what they meant is 'child of a famous parent'. Not all of them were in the public eye or attempting to break into the entertainment or sports industry. Nepo baby specifically means someone using their parents' clout or connections to get a career, it doesn't mean 'child of a famous parent' and that kind of annoyed me.

Have you seen any misuses of a word or phrase that has irritated you?

That is completely illogical.

I think it's meant to be a facetious expression meaning it's not actually cheap.

I’m nostalgic for the days when ‘gender’ was associated almost wholly with the foreign language nouns I had to learn.

I've seen someone claim about some handwaving: 'it beggars the question'.

And I've given up counting how often I've seen 'bias' used as an adjective, or 'moot' points being silenced by being rendered 'mute'.

I dare say someone else has mentioned it, but ‘disinterested’ when they mean ‘uninterested’.

Disinterested means impartial, unbiased.
Don't people learn such things at school any more?

Two from me
1 Everything is amazing

2 The Scottish word Loch is not a lock, locks are in canals. It is similar to pronouncing the word arch, People do not say ark!! They generally say arche why not say loche. Simple.

Why can some people take the tie to pronounce it properly!

Slither instead of sliver as in
" Would you like some cake?" " Ooh just a slither"
Snake cake anyone?

‘Squished’ or ‘squashed’ when they mean ‘quashed’ as in ‘I squished the rumour’. They say it all the time on TOWIE which is clearly my penance for watching brain dead tripe!!

My partner mentioned Lithuanian batteries yesterday… 😂😂

Counselled instead of cancelled.

The ch in loch doesn’t represent the same sound that the ch in arch does, so it’s not simple. The ch sound in loch is from Irish and Scottish Gaelic, but it’s not found in English. That’s why it’s hard for people to say the sound and why they say lock instead.

Gotten. Makes my blood boil.

Gotten is very useful as it doesn’t map completely to got. It’s an old word that never died out in some parts of the UK. When a speaker can choose between gotten and got, it allows more nuanced expression imho.

Specialty instead of speciality.
Purposefuiiy instead of purposely/on purpose.

My sister once referred to Oscar Pistorius as 'osteoporosis' and I still laugh many years later.

'Incidence' instead of 'incident'. I reckon people think it sounds more sciency but it just shows them up as not understanding basic statistics. One occurence is an incident and the frequency with which they occur is the incidence.

A florist near here was advertising funeral sheaths.
My favourite one is from an email from a friend, grudgingly showing respect for someone she isn't keen on "but give her a jew......".

Yes that's one that annoys me too. Seems to have become a Thing during COVID.

reaching out
likely will instead of probably will or it is likely to
excited for when people mean excited about

Since when has grammar got in the way of these things (or thinks)?

Look at "gifted" - you used to use it in the context of being good at something eg Keely Hodgkinson is a gifted 800m runner. Then some person decided it would be cool to use it instead of given and for some reason the world decided to copy it. And even worse "gifting". In German Gift means poison - it must look very odd to them to see all these people who've been gifted!

And impact as a verb. You used to say something has an impact on something but it is affected by it. But not anymore.

But for me it's another think coming and cheap at half the price is the expression I grew up with.

That reminds me of people who say council when they mean counsel - either in the context of using a barrister/counsel, or receiving wise counsel/advice.

Ultimately people need to read more, and then they'd enrich their vocabulary.

”everybody is not the same”, as opposed to ‘not everyone is the same’

I agree!

“During covid” aka now! It’s almost as though
many more thousands of people aren’t being disabled - losing jobs and health with every wave.

I know most people mean during lockdown. That’s another bugbear actually - for some “during lockdown” meant everything open but wfh when contagious as you would with norovirus for example. It’s so inconsistent. A teacher I know referred to school being closed to all children for two years - WTAF, had she forgotten she was teaching them?! I let it pass as what’s the point when rewriting history has gone that far? “Covid is just a cold now” - that’s right, covid conveniently stopped disabling children when some people started saying it was a cold. I never know whether people actually believe this stuff or whether they are scared that if the impact covid has is acknowledged it will lead to a lockdown. There are loads of things that are damaging, that are put on the back-burner, doing nothing to really address or reduce, but we don’t pretend they’re not damaging!

“Circle back” makes me cringe. “Pacific” instead of “specific”.

Today there are threads with people equating the phone alert with “during covid”. My poor head can’t take it!!!

People who pronounce Bach as Bark. 🤬