Examples of errors that have been normalised?

[spicedsoup]

Language evolves and I assume there are words or expressions that exist that developed from common misunderstandings or variations in usage. I don’t know of any examples though! Do you have any examples or know where I can find out more about how the English language has evolved?

I’ll also share that part of the reason I am curious is because I am irrationally concerned that one day ‘of’ in place of ‘ ‘ve’ as the contracted ‘have’ will become accepted as correct due to common usage. I’ll be an old lady ranting at young ones, “In my day it was HAVE! HAVE, I tell you!”. So I’m wondering what the precedent is

@Helenahandkart

The incorrect use of yourself/myself makes me wince but, having never personally studied grammar, please could someone tell me if I should be saying ‘me and Johnny’ or ‘Johnny and me’?

Jonny & I

@FindingMeno

Gotten is sneaking in.

Gotten is a perfectly acceptable word and it is a Hill. I. Will. Die. On!!

@MotherofAutism - Jonny & I

Not necessarily. Jonny and me is equally correct (or incorrect) depending on the sentence.

'Hopefully' - that originally used to mean actively doing something with hope/optimistically rather than wishing for something positive to transpire.

"I am hopefully going to Edinburgh tomorrow" meant that you were going to Edinburgh and would be doing so with cheer and optimism; not that whether or not you would be going to Edinburgh was still in question.

'Hope' itself used to have a much more definite sense of 'assuredness' rather than a bit of a vague wish.

I don't know about this one at all, but I've often wondered what the origin is of the phrase 'used to' - to mean 'formerly', but in a present-tense construction - as in e.g. 'I used to live in Germany'. It's perfectly standard and universally-understood English now, but if you stop to think about it, the structure makes no sense whatsoever in that sense! Any ideas, anybody?!

@sanityisamyth

The 'flu. It's just 'flu!!! You don't say "the arthritis" or "the cancer" or "the athlete's foot". So why THE 'flu?!

Also, why are the supermarkets plural? Tescos, Asdas, Lidls etc.

Apostrophes also need to be in every word ending in -s these days. No idea why!

I think ‘the’ in front of measles, flu, croup and probably many other ailments was actually more common in the past.

News readers all saying "uptick" now instead of "increase".

Never heard this until a year or two ago!

It's a past habitual tense and is the same sense of "used" as "I'm used to having salt on my dinner". First turns up in Middle English I think? Not 100% sure. I haven't seen it in Old English.

Sorry that was to SausageRoll.

I would add 'whom', which is barely heard at all now.

Apologies - I just realised that somebody had already done so way before me!

Gotten is a perfectly acceptable word and it is a Hill. I. Will. Die. On!!

There was an episode/edition of Tenable where they had to name the ten words of six letters ending in 'tten' (or something like that) and I was fully expecting to see 'gotten' in the list. IIRC, somebody did say gotten and lost their life, as it wasn't accepted. I can't remember whether or not they claimed it was an American word and not in a standard British English dictionary.

I was fuming at the telly for ages. I know they sometimes find reasons to whittle a list down if there are more than ten qualifying answers (such as 'the first ten alphabetically'), but there was no reason whatsoever to say that word was untenable - it was a perfect answer.

Thanks, Clumping - but in that case, I'd still like to know the origins of 'I am used to' meaning 'I am habituated to'. Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't make any sense etymologically!

The specific "I'm used to " construction seems to be surprisingly recent.

News readers all saying "uptick" now instead of "increase".

I've also just recently noticed on several occasions (they may have been doing it for ages, though!) that the BBC have started using the American newspaper headline comma in place of 'and' or '&' on their news website - e.g. (made up example) "Tesco, Asda report that food price rises cannot be avoided."

Here's (part of) the past tense bit. I don't know if you have access to the OED (perhaps through your library?) but it can be really interesting for stuff like this. The "use" entry is looooong though.

Thanks, Clumping - that's really interesting. I wonder who was the first to introduce it?!

Sausage, in the last entry I posted a picture of it shows the first attested use of "used to" in that specific sense as being from John of Trevisa in 1387, though I haven't scoured the other definitions to see if there's an earlier use of a slightly different version of it, and presumably people already used it generally by then if someone was writing it down…

Oh, I don't know, my mother gives me a daily update on who has "the covid".

Yes, definitely a usage I associate with older generations.

Someone mentioned ‘May’ and ‘might’. The reluctance to use ‘might’ is almost as great as the reluctance to use ‘and me’.
The difference is between:
what may have happened (but we’ll never know)
And
What might have been (if only we’d done things differently).

@OchonAgusOchonOh

Recommend me, instead of recommend an x to me.

Similarly “needs collected by tomorrow” and the like. The words “to be” seem to have vanished from some vocabularies (or should that be they seem vanished from some vocabularies).

Have and of was the first thing that sprang to mung when I read the post's title!

Other mixups that are becoming worryingly accepted:

appraise and apprise
precedent and president
remuneration and remuneration
biannial and biennial (and their variants)
specific and pacific
paralytic pronounced 'paryletic'.

Oh and 'snuck' (American usage?) instead of 'sneaked'.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll I must say I see/hear 'whom' (incorrectly) a great deal in our office environment: many people adopt it as a 'formal' way of saying 'who' in their business emails etc. 😬

I wish I could one could edit MN posts! Nothing worse than missing a typo on a pedantry thread: 'mung' should have said 'mind' of course!

Laur Muphry's Law strikes again

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

'Hopefully' - that originally used to mean actively doing something with hope/optimistically rather than wishing for something positive to transpire.

"I am hopefully going to Edinburgh tomorrow" meant that you were going to Edinburgh and would be doing so with cheer and optimism; not that whether or not you would be going to Edinburgh was still in question.

'Hope' itself used to have a much more definite sense of 'assuredness' rather than a bit of a vague wish.

I don't know about this one at all, but I've often wondered what the origin is of the phrase 'used to' - to mean 'formerly', but in a present-tense construction - as in e.g. 'I used to live in Germany'. It's perfectly standard and universally-understood English now, but if you stop to think about it, the structure makes no sense whatsoever in that sense! Any ideas, anybody?!

Yes - what we really mean when we say 'hopefully' is 'it is hoped that ...'

I have been told the German equivalent 'hoffentlich' makes grammatical sense in a way 'hopefully' doesn't, but my knowledge of German doesn't extend to etymologically deconstructing 'hoffentlich' to understand why.

@KaptainKaveman

Cliché. The noun has somehow morphed into the adjective. " That's so cliché ".

Comprises of. NO! IT'S 'COMPRISES'
Return back. NO! IT'S 'RETURN'.
Continue on. NO! IT'S 'CONTINUE'.
Revert back. NO! IT'S 'REVERT'.

Not long ago on a similar thread I tried my hardest to explain exactly why 'irregardless' is a made up double negative which cancels itself out, but some people just couldn't grasp it ( bangs head against wall).

Cliché is the past participle of the French verb clicher which means 'to stereotype'. So cliché = stereotyped, the use of which as an adjective is perfectly acceptable.