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.

I had a boyfriend years ago. Long-distance relationship initially. English was his second language. I spoke his language better, so we communicated in his. But he was learning English sayings/idioms/cliches and one of the things he said to me was that he was really looking forward to our next weekend together and declared excitedly, "I'm waiting with baseball bat!"

After undergoing a shit-tonne of 'what fresh hell is this?' deep analysis and realising he wasn't going to kill or sodomise me with a baseball bat (phew!), what he was trying to say was, "I'm waiting with bated breath."

What's off your own back supposed to be then?

Honestly I thought it was "doggy dog" for ages. When I thought about why it would be "doggy dog world" I concluded it was because we also had the expression "gone to the dogs" as in "this place has really gone to the dogs!" so I thought "it's a doggy dog world" would have meant something similar.

Don't worry Allie, if you ever find yourself in 1990s South Central Los Angeles, it IS, in fact, a Doggy Dogg world.

I think it matters, too, but being superior about it is inappropriate and doesn't help. (Not accusing anyone on this thread of being superior).

Plus I don't think we ever had a golden age of literacy where everyone read etc. I suspect true functional illiteracy is possibly at one of its lowest levels ever right now. I'd bet that your typical person's range of expression has widened, partly due to media use, and some people will not be deriving expressions correctly. Some of these threads do veer dangerously close to making fun of people with lower levels of education than oneself using particular expressions. At which we're back to snobbery. (Again, not referring to any PP in particular).

@HarryElephante

Telling people to 'get a life' is part of the problem.

It's becoming de rigueur to get spellings, pronunciations and grammar badly wrong and then defend it as not mattering.

It does matter if you don't want to come across as thick.

Or maybe people are going to defend being thick, too, because, well... why does it matter?

Well I'll tell you why, it's because stupid people have more kids than clever people so, with the population already getting ever thicker, the last thing we need is more dumbing down.

I once read over on MSE about someone receiving a "Jester of Goodwill" and to this day imagine them opening the door to a brightly coloured bloke with bells wishing them well.

It's "off your own bat", DontBeOffensive - I guess it's something to do with cricket but haven't checked since quite a long time ago, when I last said "off your own back" thinking it was correct
As for "another think/thing coming" - I'm utterly confuzzled.

This thread reminds me of something my DP says, no matter how many times I have previously corrected him on it (and I don't bother anymore, now it just tickles me and I find it quite endearing). He just cannot say "all inclusive holiday", he always says "an all inconclusive holiday"

It's because nobody reads any more.

They only hear words and phrases used, so they've absolutely no idea of the derivation or correct usage of the words. 'Moot' for example, comes from the Anglo Saxon for 'meeting', so it's a 'debated point'. I know this, because I read. A lot of people just think 'moot' means 'argument'.

I have the opposite of this problem, where I mispronounce words because I've only ever seen them written down and not heard them. Less of an issue now, but when I was a pretentious little shit child, I was forever mispronouncing words I had only ever read.

Someone on Ebay was selling a Rabbit Bowel.

She was not amused when I asked if it came complete with poo

@DontBeOffensive - the phrase is off your own bat

The number of people who will contend to the death that it's 'another thing coming' is utterly bemusing to me.

There was a thread similar to this a while ago and I learned lots of other good ones on there!

A jester of good will was my personal favourite

One I see so often on mumsnet is 'reign it in' or 'free reign'. I mean, just think about it, it's total nonsense. I know we don't use horses for transport any more, but you'd think the equestrian origins would make more sense than something vaguely regal.

I'm so stealing "Belgian Whistles" though... excellent

longearedbat - considering 'rein it in' relates to the exertion of control and 'free reign' to autonomy and choice, I don't think the 'reign' assumption is such an off-the-wall one, tbh.

A lot of people seem to spell "intact" as two words, i.e. "in tact" now. The "defiantly" thing really irritates me because the two words are not even said the same way, and why is everyone on MN spelling "rediculous" like that??

Ah fuck. 'Free rein'. Obviously.

I saw someone refer to pass the parcel as 'parcel parcel' a few weeks ago. Made me laugh a lot. Reddit has a whole sub dedicated to this sort of stupidity -r/boneappletea

Wondering around instead of wandering around is one I'm beginning to notice more and more.

I love Belgian Whistles.

To the poster who said they mispronounce words because they have only ever read them. That is completely different, educating yourself by reading can only ever be a good thing.

An ex friend of mine once referred to someone being “resplendid” in their fancy dress costume. She’s forever banging on about how clever she is.

That made me think she was a bit thick, TBH.

Language evolves though doesn’t? For all kinds of reasons: people mishear, misspell, misunderstand and before we know it we have new words and phrases.
The simile ‘as dull as ditch water’ is now more commonly said as ‘as dull as dish water.’

‘Goodbye’ is a contraction of ‘God be with you/ye’ yet to look at you wouldn’t guess that.

This is hilarious. I love 'from the gecko' and 'Jester of Goodwill'

I know more than one person who talk about exasperating the situation. Funny, but annoying too.

Foxy 'Then again, there is some poor proofreading in novels these days too.' I work with books and am more and more shocked and depressed by the language 'abilities' of people who are actually paid to work as copy-editors and proofreaders.