to think someone should know doggy dog makes no sense?

[Juells]

Heard someone (on TV) using this yesterday. "It's a doggy dog world". Why do people think this means anything?

Later (think it was on Antiques Road Trip) someone said they were thinking of changing tact.

Cologne, dear. Cologne.

😂😂😂

Writing carn’t insteand of can’t. See it all the time. Hate R’s in words that don’t have them

I was in a posh cheese shop before Christmas. Huge queue and getting a bit frustrated and claustrophobic. Assistant kept offering slithers if cheese to taste for those waiting. I broke in the end and corrected her.

@bigsnugglebunny

I saw on MN this week "I'll just have to pull my socks off and get on with it".

as an aside-how often do people use the word epitome in ordinary conversation?

Relatively often here .

Working progress

On a train recently. Voice over the tannoy whatsit says 'For Reading, please alight from carriage A due to short platform' or something similar.
The panic of one guy asking where the lights were and what difference did the lights make was both shocking and a bit sad.

how often do people use the word epitome in ordinary conversation?

I use it on occasion.

However, I can be a bit pretentious and say things like, "Shall we reprise yesterday's meal?" instead of, "Leftovers okay?"

I know laughing at someone mispronouncing a word that they've only read is unkind (viz my "awry/or-eee" embarrassment, or my mother still remembering in her 70s the shame of being laughed at for reading out, "The dog did its dirty" instead of its "duty") but would prefer to be corrected when I do get things wrong. The absence of mockery would be a bonus.

However, I did enjoy my mother (her again) making a teacher friend look up the word "pronunciation" after he'd condescendingly corrected her and told her to pronounce (pronunce?) it "pronOUnciation".

MIL actually refers to her 'Arthur Itus' as if it's an imaginary dude giving her gyp

Why should people who have only ever read a word automatically know how to pronounce it?
I made the point earlier that people mispronouncing words they have only ever read is a result of extensive reading and encountering words they may rarely use in real life. Nobody should ever be mocked for this, many people, particularly in the past were self-educated and deserve praise for this rather than derision. Using phrases like doggy dog, jester of goodwill, Belgian Whistles are signs of lack of reading - not that I would actually mock these people to their face either.

I think people on here are conflating the two things.

I think with the rise of social media that most people write for public consumption so much more than they used to, so these misunderstandings which would previously have been present only in people’s own heads are now on display for the world to see. The problem/interesting thing is that we also read a lot of content written by non-professional writers so there’s room for errors to spread/language to mutate.

'Spare of the moment' gets used a lot in some of my WhatsApp friends groups.
I don't directly correct them but will use spur of the moment independently but nothing changes.

I figure they must must think that I'm wrong!

One of my teenage son’s cutest moments was when he kept saying “paradidge-um” when in deep discussions with me. It took me a while to work out he meant “paradigm” and I was so proud of him for using it correctly.

I had only ever seen the word ballache written down and in my head it was pronounced ba-lash. Thankfully I never said it out loud and eventually the penny dropped 😂

I just this second saw an 'All be it' on a Facebook status

Until I was in my early 20s I thought the phrase ‘all intents and purposes’ was ‘all intensive purposes’.

10 years ago we went to New York on a break. DH told a few people we were staying in the Flatty Ron District.

Back in the olden days, people learned Latin, and also learned about the stories and mythis, which meant an ability to pronounce words like epitome and names like Persephone, because they'd heard them read out by the teacher.

I'd never laugh at anyone using a word they'd read but not said, they usually kind of question themselves as they are saying it which makes it easier to correct them gently.

However, re books with mistakes in - you'd be horrified at how many authors are not very well read and use words that they think are impressive (but quite often don't mean what they think they do). If those authors then go on to self publish, they will frequently skip the 'paying for an editor' part, because they don't realise how woeful their lack of vocabulary is.

And I have come across the odd editor whose vocabulary isn't quite as large as it should be, but they usually query a word if they don't understand it, or look it up (and then tell me they had to look it up, which is quite sweet).

Someone I knew used to say “in one foul swoop” instead of “fell”... I started thinking of it as “one fowl swoop” - which I love and frequently use in jest hoping nobody takes me too seriously

Oh, and I think we are increasingly running two words together which ought to be separated, or at least hyphenated, which is adding to confusion.

So I tend to call my coworkers my cow orkers.

We do not ork cows, I have to add.

I had only ever seen the word ballache written down and in my head it was pronounced ba-lash. Thankfully I never said it out loud and eventually the penny dropped 😂

I properly laughed at this 😂

@heidipi - .. I often used to pronounce legend leg-end, if I saw it in an article. No idea why as I knew the word legend.

CaptainMyCaptain

I made the point earlier that people mispronouncing words they have only ever read is a result of extensive reading and encountering words they may rarely use in real life.
I still mentally mispronounce words I came across as a child - awry will forever be awe-ree in my head, mishap rhymes with bishop, and protagonist has an adge in the middle

I'm reading an Elif Shafak book at the moment and she seems to be a good writer but she used the word "decimate" to mean utterly destroy, instead of its correct meaning, a pet hate of mine. I think decimate is going the way of fantastic and will be accepted to mean something other than its original meaning. However, the clue is in the beginning of the word!
Pretentious, moi?

I was browsing ads for horses for sale a while ago. It was like having to interpret a foreign language at times ,'Mare for sale, well bread (bred) and red chested (registered),