Misuse of words( light hearted)

[Ollienoodles45isbananas]

My dd constantly uses the word "like" multiple times in sentences, it's slowly driving me insane. Iv asked her so many times to not use the word unless it's actually needed in the sentence. To make matters worse she never ever stops talking so we must here "like" a thousand times a day. So aibu to either charge her 10p for every time she says it, or gag her? Is this something that's happening with most kids of today?

EastMidsMummy
We need milk, isn't it? I don't eat carrots, isn't it? He was nice, isn't it? She won't come, isn't it?

Er, what the fuck? Who on earth says that cobblers??

That'll be the Welsh

One that I'm still doing, even though I've relocated out of Yorkshire back to the south where I was born, is using "while" to mean "until".

Me: Can you work a 9 while 5 shift for me tomorrow, Bob?

Bob: A 9 what ?

Me:

I actually quite like "youse", "yiz" and "y'all" as the plural form of "you". I think English is sadly lacking this.

But I've just remembered an annoyance of mine, and I especially run across it in call centres: people using "yourself" instead of "you". EG "We would expect to hear from yourself in the event of any problems" or "that's a choice for yourself to make" or "that would be down to yourself." I think they use it because they feel it's less confrontational than "you" - but it just sets my teeth on edge.

'Pacifically' instead of 'specifically'! My sister's ex also used to say 'Columbus clouds' rather than 'cumulus clouds'!

Confession. For thirty years I have been saying hustlings instead of hustings and even read it as such.

Finally, at the last GE the penny dropped. I've never written it, thankfully.

My bff used to say essesional oil. She always had essesional oil for her oil burner. For ages I thought it must be a brand name till I finally asked her. Turns out she meant essential. We still laugh about it 15 years later. This is the woman who's catchphrase is "I don't mean that do I?"

PMSL at that's a gibbon

DD teenager has taken to ending almost every sentence in 'yeah' not actually asking 'do you agree' but sort of trailing off.....

eg blah blah blah then blah blah blah and [slight pause] yeah

Argh!!

it's a doggy dog world hahaha!!! love it

"A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness." - George W. Bush. Plus pretty much everything he ever said in office!

My DP has lots of these:

"Pacific" for "specific"
"Sumbarine"
and he write "except" for "accept", including in an email to a solicitor this morning.

Good job I love him.

I am not sure I see what's wrong with "can I get?" though. It's a perfectly reasonable phrase. You are asking to be given something, ergo you are getting it.

In the case of definitely and defiantly I think most people do actually know the difference but don't know how to spell it. If you're trying to spell it and don't know it's defi then autocorrect changes it to defiantly.

Sorry if it has already been mentioned but 'there'; 'their' and 'they're'. Also 'to'; 'too' and 'two'. Also, an apostrophe does not mean "whoa, here comes an 's'"!

Myself and yourself are overused. What's wrong with me/I and you?

'Could / should / would of' instead of 'could / should / would have'

My husband will be telling me about a phone call he had to make, the points he intends to raise and then we must enter a time warp as he continues "I said, xyz" and finishes in the past tense. It drives me up the wall but his dad does it too

I went to a conference earlier this week where the keynote speaker was obviously convinced that the word 'exponential' meant 'fucking huge shitloads' rather than having an actual mathematical meaning. The math* teachers in the crowd were unimpressed.

(*Before anyone hoists me on my own petard, I live in America, and therefore my colleagues are math teachers. Bizarrely, I teach English, in American.)

Sometimes the misuse of words can be quite fun ... A winter sale in a tent shop: "Now is the winter of our discount tents"!

One of the lovely 'grammar grumbles' mugs I am tempted to buy from The Literary Gify Company, for those driven mad by the incorrect use of 'literally' ...

Mortified... people always use mortified wrong!

Oldie, but a goldie, "pacific" instead of "specific". Woe is me for the number of times I have heard that!

That gibbon one is priceless. I have one that comes from a column I read, years ago, about this very subject. Someone wrote in that he used the word "hirsute" instead of "henceforth", saying, for example, to his assistant, "Hirsute, Ms Smith, I'd like these reports in triplicate."

Loath and loathe are often used incorrectly (even on this thread).

Ambivalent is rarely used correctly.

Sat and stood seem to have replaced sitting and standing.

Enormity instead of magnitude is increasingly common too.

lovemyway I completely agree. Also "asks" and "eats" when people mean "questions" and "food".

I'm a lovely tolerant person really...

I'm a lovely tolerant person really... ...that's a gibbon....fantastic. And I want a cup, but I saw an Irish version that uses. Fecking....even better!

My DH family will say: yes we should do that, didn't we.

My DH has been been reprogrammed (thankfully, or I'd have to LTB)