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?

@Festivalfanaticit’s not wrong though

Oooh I agree with you , also
Pat testing , Portable Appliance Testing Testing
I work with some very highly qualified electricians and hear it all the time .

Why though it annoys me and it will never make sense to me 🤣

For some reason it annoys me when people say o instead of 0. I have to ask for phone numbers regularly and o765…… winds me up !

Yes but didn't BT themselves do it when they introduced the new area codes? Oh one for London instead of zero one. It's too established now.

'A £100' annoys me. It's £100 or a hundred pounds, not a one hundred pounds.

Same with 'the HMS Victory'. The Victory or HMS Victory, not the His Majesty's ship Victory.

😆

🤦🏼‍♀️

Disinterested. One bad apple. The proof of the pudding.

It can be both
"Where shall we go for lunch?" "Hmm I'll have a think." Not "hmm I'll have a thought."

Besides which even if you argue that the wrong tense of the verb "to think" is used, that's still less wrong than introducing a random "thing" with no context. One is grammatically incorrect but the other makes no sense - by all laws of physics, numbers and linguistics there logically cannot be "another" thing if there hasn't been a first thing!

Yessss me too! This one really in particular gets on my wick.

As does "staycation" to mean UK holiday, as pp have said.

Mine is when people talk about "bad apples", meaning a few isolated incidents/examples, when the whole point of the "bad apple spoiling the barrel" metaphor is that the rot spreads and isn't limited to a few people.

There are way too many words and phrases that annoy me and, in fact, just reading this thread makes me mad! 😝

In addition to that, I really dislike grammar police and those who equate being pedantic with having superior intellect.

So, we have a conundrum.

I’d wondered what the phrase actually meant but hadn’t cared enough to google it so that was informative, thanks 😆. Not the same but saw giraffe spelled Draff on a listing the other day and thought I’d share as this is the closest I’ve seen for having an outlet for that since

Ive 100% heard cheap at half the price - never thought about it before. Could it mean it’s actually worth double?

Another one which grates on me is an item being advertised as 'buy xxx and get xxx for free' - it is NOT 'for free'. it is either just 'free' or 'for nothing'!

It doesn't make sense though. Most things would be cheap at half the price. Cheap at double the price would make more sense.

Thanks @Echobelly I was literally (I really was) thinking last night that we hadn't had a round of 'another thing vs think coming' for a while 🤣

My personal one is the use of "both haven't" instead of "neither has" e.g. "We both haven't been to Alton Towers before" vs "Neither of us has been to Alton Towers before". I like the word 'neither' and feel it's under-appreciated.

chesta draws instead of chest of drawers

Chester Draws, FFS 😅

My favourite malapropism I saw someone write on here is "pre-Madonna" (prima donna).

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I quite like this. I might start using it as a feminist alternative to B.C.

a colleague would say super-duper far too frequently. But she would pronounce super as syouper. When I asked why she didn't say dyouper she stopped speaking to me.

I had a co-worker who regularly used the word weary instead of wary. I've heard other people do this too, and find it annoying as hell!

Wandering instead of wondering

This reminds me of my favourite annoyance - a "free gift".

perfect eggcorn

“They was in the restaurant”. Was?? WAS?? ‘They were’, or ‘they are’. This drives me mad!