Conjoining words - everyday, abit, alot, weightloss

[WhatdoesitmeanKeith]

I need to come here and vent! Why, just why is this happening so much?

These ‘words’ are not even suggested by autocorrect, so I really doubly don’t understand it.

Caveat, I know in some contexts ‘everyday’ is okay, but the correct context is not how I’m seeing it used. Help!

Agreed, I notice this a lot (alot?) and might even have posted about it. My favourite is “now a days”, closely followed by “be care full”. It’s all very odd and irritating.

I agree.

I see 'your' for 'you're' and random use of there/their/they're so often that I have started doing a double take to see if I've used the correct version when I use them myself.

I saw "tic for tac" this morning.

I sometimes type alot. Not deliberately but by not striking the space bar adequately. I also tend to double letters, accidentally typing off, inn etc.
The spellchecker misses them.

There/their/they're bugs me because the wrong use means I have to think about what the meaning is, whereas normally I'd just read it IYSWIM.
'Look at them there hills' vs 'Look at them there eating there picnic'.

I’ve just seen ‘Am I over reacting..’ to which I answered in my head ‘ How am I supposed to know if you’ve had enough of reacting or not!"

I think I saw that one too.

That’s true and fair! I’m definitely guilty of that one.

It is a little ironic, because, of course, caveat in Latin is a verb, meaning 'let him watch out'.

But in English it's a noun. It is a modern trend; to 'verbify' nouns

I had an American colleague who once said "let's get this document signaturised".

Or, as we'd say in English, signed.

Yes, and the Americans say 'burglarised' instead of 'burgled'.

@BooneyBeautiful. I think i could adopt the word burglarised …it perhaps conveys the emotional aspect of being burgled!!

As this is Pedants' Corner I hope allowed to say I hate seeing a space left after the first bracket of a parenthesis. Not sure why people do that.

@ThrushorSparrow , it's 'Pedants' corner'.
I agree with you, and I dislike spaces either side of / (e.g. he / she or and / or).

I'm confused. Are you quibbling about the fact I capitalised the "c" of "corner"?

What about home work? Or home learning? Are they one or two words?

I feel like these things are contagious. I clicked on the thread because I was having a “Wait! What?” moment wondering if they had recently become compound words when I wasn’t paying attention.

When I started in school “today” was “to-day”

As I said, @ThrushorSparrow , it's Pedants' corner. I was being pedantic.

@Ironfloor269 , homework and home learning.

I have been told 'language evolves' many times. In some cases it evolves to improve and keep up to date. But in others it deteriorates to create or perpetuate errors. This degrades language and we lose nuance of meaning. Do those 973 not care about that?

Your write OP

This sometimes happens to me to be fair, when Im typing fast and perhaps the space bar doesnt activate enough and I think, meh, Im just going to leave it to be honest.

And then theres other times, (it just did it again with othertimes - I should have left it!) when Im genuinely not sure if its two words or one.

I give up. What is an eggcorn?

An eggcorn is an incorrect word that sounds like the correct word. Like eggcorn instead of acorn, or old-timers disease instead of Alzheimer’s disease.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn#:~:text=An%20eggcorn%20is%20the%20alteration,unexpectedly%20fitting%20or%20creative%20malapropism.

Terrible word. Supposedly a mishearing of 'acorn', supported by the similarity in shape. Now taken to mean any mishearing which gets repeated. For example, 'should of' (which I think qualifies although some don't).

Its more than sounding like the word though, its also that the eggcorn makes sense even though its wrong

So eggcorn, because an acorn looks like a little egg in a cup. Old timers disease because its something that predominantly affects old people.

No Should Of is not an eggcorn.

Whenever I see someone has typed/written “alot” (which my phone autocorrected to ‘a lot’ - so how do they even type that incorrectly?) it makes me think of a drawing I saw years ago where the artist said they visualised an alot as a type of creature, and then visualised “I like this alot” - someone hugging the alot, and so on.

Helps me cope with the use of ‘alot’ instead of ‘a lot’ because of the amusing visualisations it provides.