Struggled to stifle a giggle at this one.......

[MadreInglese]

I have a colleague who is frequently using the wrong words when trying to sound clever, today she came out with this corker on the phone -

"Well I wouldn't be too keen to do that really, in case it sets a president for future situations like this"

My boss always used to say 'pacific' when he meant 'specific' and he used to use it for his little induction speech for newbies every week. I never could bring myself to correct him but I cringed every time because I knew very well that our job was geeky enough within the firm without everyone thinking we were illiterate too

a person i know mentioned that we need a "hussy" of helpers

i prsume she meant "posse"

Loads of these drive me mad- eg specific/ pacific, and there are loads of others which completely escape me at the moment!

My gran had some graet malaprops- at Christmas she always produced (with a flourish) a "Walls Vendetta" (that well-known ice-cream cake with its own menacing ulterior motive!) But, as she was the the first to admit, she WAS getting "a senile dimension"

I was terribly embarrassed when my girlfriend used the phrase "I can't be arsed" in polite company. Initially she struggled to understand what the problem was until I discovered that she had thought the expression was "I can't be asked"... which actually works just fine. She also used the word twat in a marketing presentation to 500 delegates, though she had thought it was akin to idiot... note to self to improve the language I use at home...

In her defence, she is german, and 9 times out of 10 is the best person to go to for most English spelling and grammar questions.

My best friend is great for this type of thing. A couple of months ago she was ranting abut how the chinese government are so abrupt she meant corrupt.

*about. Trust me to make a bloody typo on a pedant thread!

This is not a pedantic mistake but still a very funny one:

My aunt announced that the pudding we were going to have was Amnesia.

she meant of course ambrosia

I used to know someone who pronounced "awry" as Awe-ree.

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I really really really hate it when people say 'will you learn me...' instead of 'teach me...' or can I you borrow me' instead of lend me'. Not just mispronnunciation but completely wrong words!

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LOL at Dior.
I also have a friend who is a useful source of this type of malapropism and who also mispronounces words - one that irritates me beyond any level of sense is when she uses 'Yole!' instead of 'Yo!' No idea where it came from. But she sticks to it like glue...

MsHW - I will admit to also mispronouncing awry in that way, but only until I was about 14. Then I learnt.

I really dislike the (I think) South/East London use of "brought" instead of "bought" - my granddad was guilty of this one and I used to have to bite my lip whenever he said it.

Do any of you hear "arxed" instead of "asked"? Think it is a London thing.

Oh my word, I had a "boss" once who regularly used words he thought were cool, completely out of context. We actually got to the point where we would play, "spot the random statements from [insertname]" on boring meetings (which was entertaining, but could get tricky when we were all wetting ourselves for no apparent reason).

Sadly, I can't remember any of the actual words he used incorrectly.

I also was in a tricky situation a few years ago where someone asked me to read her thesis for her - she was a client. She had used the word "salient" incorrectly throughout - so kept talking about "raising the saliency" or "it's not salient".

Hang on, have I got the saliency thing wrong now? I did find after reading 50 pages of it, I've never really got to the point where I can use it correctly myself and I never use the word!

I use salient in the same way as relevant or pertinent

but I may be wrong

I know that you don't "raise the saliency". You can say, "the salient points in this argument are..." So it does mean relevant. But you can't use it in the context of making something more relevant ie you can't "I'd like to make my argument more salient"?

I had a tutor who would always refer to 'pacific' instead of 'specific', etc etc. But her best one by far was 'vinagrettes' instead of 'vignettes'.

It got so bad that we would all be waiting, poised in a quiet frenzy of anticipation, for one of her malapropisms. I once had to stuff my entire fist into my mouth in the middle of a lecture to stop myself snorting out loud...

[quite interlude while MrsB spends some quality time with the OED]

well, 'salience' and 'saliency' are both real words

but I agree that 'raising the saliency' is a bit dubious