It annoys me when I hear: "The proof is in the pudding," unless I've just been told about the rum-laced jello...
Less frequently I've heard, "I don't GIVE a tinker's damn," which has two problems, wrong verb and wrong kind of dam.
Does anyone have other examples of sayings which are often mis-used, mis-quoted, or mis-applied?
Less frequently I've heard, "I don't GIVE a tinker's damn," which has two problems, wrong verb and wrong kind of dam.
Does anyone have other examples of sayings which are often mis-used, mis-quoted, or mis-applied?
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, April 4, 2005 - 2:10 AMMongo want you display correct versions, hey? Muhhhhhhhhh.... -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, April 6, 2005 - 12:27 PMMongo,
A correct version of the second one is
not WORTH a tinker's dam (or damn).
One version has it that a tinker was an itinerant worker who swore a lot, so damn really is the curse word, and is thus not worth much.
Another version, which some claim is folk entymology, is that a dam is a wad of dough that the tinker used as a mold when fixing pots and pans with solder--after the dam had served its purpose it was simply broken, thus it was not worth anything.
In either event, WORTH is the operative word. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, April 7, 2005 - 12:01 PMMuchas gracias. I remember the correct version now. As I am often compelled to explain: defective head parts. Thanks for the etymology. Sure is folky. Or folksy? -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, May 24, 2005 - 11:30 AMThe one that always gets me and it may have mentioned previously (as it is so egregious an affront!):
I could care less. ARGH! It's "I couldn't care less." If you COULD care less, so what?
The other thing that bothers me is the incorrect usage of the apostrophe, as in one I read nearly 20 years ago that STILL gives me nightmares: (on a menu) Waffle's.
D. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, October 24, 2005 - 9:41 PMDarla, I could not agree more. So many people now say COULD care less. I just don't understand it. Once again, it's an example of a misusage spreading like a virus, and the brain-dead are the carriers.
These misplaced apostrophes are also driving me insane. They are moving beyond the lighted signs of motels and grocery stores (cheap bed's; apple's .69/lb....), and are appearing more and more in the local newspaper advertisements. Are the ads submitted for print not subject to final editing and approval? Where's the quality control? Have newspapers been laying off their proofreaders?
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 10:50 AMI know at one newspaper I worked at, the copy editors couldn't make changes on the ads. The ad people were union, we were not. Hence, ad errors stayed in.
I've become an apostrophe Nazi: I take out my pen and correct signs in stores. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 4:49 PMMary,
I've also been known to do that...what fun!
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Unsu...
Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, May 26, 2006 - 12:31 PMDarla, I'm glad you griped about "could care less." Your response is classic, 'if you COULD care less, so what?' This one bugs me too.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, April 4, 2005 - 8:43 AMThe one that pops to mind:
"Money is the root of all evil."
The quote is "The love of money is the root of all evil..." 1 Timothy 6:10 -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, April 4, 2005 - 9:59 PMThe first one should be (I believe), "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." I don't recognize the other one.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, May 24, 2005 - 6:11 PMI can't handle grocery stores with signs that say " 12 items or less". It should be "12 items or fewer". Fewer people! FEWER!!! -
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Unsu...
Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, May 25, 2005 - 7:03 AMOh my god! the less/fewer issue is definitely top on my list of grammar related pet peeves! And people do it so often that I find myself in a perpetual state of peeve-ness (peevement? peevishness?) GGGGRRRRRRRRRR! -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, May 25, 2005 - 9:30 AMOk, I agree, but shouldn't it really be "12 or fewer items"?
Splitting hairs, maybe, but heck, isn't that what we're all about?!
Besides, I never need fewer than 12 items.
D. -
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Unsu...
Re: Butchered sayings?
Sat, October 8, 2005 - 4:23 PM<< can't handle grocery stores with signs that say " 12 items or less". It should be "12 items or fewer". >>
<<Ok, I agree, but shouldn't it really be "12 or fewer items"? >>
Shouldn't the periods and question mark above be inside the quotation marks? I know that's what we do at work, following A.P. style. Or is it OK either way? -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Sat, October 8, 2005 - 10:45 PMWell. The MLA has weighed in both ways throughout the years. The current standard is for question marks and exclamation points to be inside the quotation marks while periods go outside.
Very confusing if you ask me. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, October 10, 2005 - 5:09 PMGenerally, what I do is this. If the whole sentence is a quote, I put the punctuation inside. If only a portion of the sentence is a quote, but it ends the sentence, I put the punctuation outside. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 13, 2005 - 9:43 PM>The current standard is for question marks and exclamation >points to be inside the quotation marks while periods go >outside.
I thought it was almost the opposite. Periods and commas always go inside. Question/exclamation marks only go inside if the quotation is a question/exclamation and the sentence containing the quotation is not.
The only reason I heard for this is that periods and commas look stupid and get lost floating outside the quotation mark. I have a friend whose name ends in an apostrophe, and I never know how to end sentences about him because it looks too weird to end on'. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, June 16, 2006 - 11:27 PMQuestioned comma chameleon exclaims "I could care less. All pudding can been utilized. Period."
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, June 16, 2006 - 11:53 PM>>The only reason I heard for this is that periods and commas look stupid and get lost floating outside the quotation mark.<<
I heard that the only reason this rule exists in the first place--periods and commas inside quotation marks--was due to the physical limitations of printers based on movable type: period and comma type blocks were smaller than other type blocks, if they were set to the right of the closing quote mark they were likely to move during press operations. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Butchered sayings?
Sat, June 17, 2006 - 8:44 AMSounds reasonable. Same type of thing is responsible for the dread monster Underlined Text, where Technology and Laziness told Art and Beauty: "This is our domain." And they joined together and begat the twins Imitation and Limitation, those foul spirits who, in their turn, begat the Dark Prince Mangled Presentation, ruler of Grade School Newsletters, Cheap Flyers, and Bar Mitzvah Announcements. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, July 12, 2006 - 1:59 AMHmmmm -- I got one ...
"Have your cake and eat it, too..."
It should be "Eat your cake and have it, too."
Why the hell would anyone merely "have" their cake? Isn't the point of having cake to eat it? However, having eaten it, to have it as well, would then be the raison d'etre of the phrase.
Takers? -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, July 12, 2006 - 8:53 AM
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, October 14, 2005 - 10:29 AMDoes "wallah" for "Voila" count? *cringe* It's painful just typing it...
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, October 14, 2005 - 10:42 AMMy favorite is "should of" instead of "should have." That drives me nuts. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Sat, October 15, 2005 - 7:57 PM"Try and" for "try to."
And you stand "in line" not "on line" (unless you're wired while waiting). -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Sun, October 16, 2005 - 11:32 AMAnd then there is the ever-popular "suppose to" as opposed to the correct "supposed to." And this from so-called educated people. Ugh.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, October 18, 2005 - 2:01 PMCanadians say "on line" I do believe.... -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, October 21, 2005 - 7:45 PMDitto "use to" for "used to."
USians or whatever Canexicans call the other Americans also say "on line." I say it myself sometimes. But it doesn't make any sense as it's presumably derived from standing in a line not standing on one.
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Unsu...
Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, May 26, 2006 - 12:36 PMI thought "on line" was regional. I've never heard a lifelong Southerner say it, but many people down here from New York do. I've asked a few of them about it and each has said the same thing: "It's what everybody says up north." (This prompts many a native Floridian---all 200 of us--to mutter, "We don't care how you do it up north.")
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Fri, May 26, 2006 - 2:10 PMI'm wondering who the edumacated woman was conversating with.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, July 19, 2006 - 11:39 PMDefinitely a regionalism. I guess it depends upon whether you view the row of people as the line, or whether you view the line as an invisible thing on the floor that people line up on.
In a way, the "on line" makes some sense. If you tell someone you're going to get in line, and no one else is there, are you really in line? If you say "on line," then you're correct even if you're the only one, because the line exists without any people.
That's my rationalization for the moment, anyway...
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Sat, October 22, 2005 - 2:27 PMoy.
you're just splitting hairs, now.
those aren't butchered sayings so much as they are the result of dialect and allision.
god forbid that we should allide our words so that they might flow more smoothly when coming from our mouths.
as for actual butchered _sayings_, i think the best example i can think of is when president bush ruined the saying, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," by changing the second portion to "shame on you."
[in any case, i suppose his version says a lot about where he thinks responsibility lies when it comes to his policies.]
~e. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 4:57 PMGranny,
Yes, he butchered it all right, but far worse than you have said. What actually came out of his mouth, if my recollection serves me, is "fool me once...shame on...shame on you. B'fool me...ya can't fool me again." I mean, he tore that one up. He had the look of a stunned deer caught in the headlights of a semi as he was fouling that one up. He was lost at sea completely, very much like his entire time in office. Shame on him, indeed.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, October 24, 2005 - 9:21 PMHere's one that's been at the top of my list for some time now: so many folks these days like to use the saying 'short lived', but the problem is that about 999 out of 1,000 folks will pronounce it with a short i sound, rather than the proper long i sound. It is particularly annoying when it is pronounced incorrectly by a news anchor on television, but then I'm still just naive enough to believe that they should be an especially linguistically gifted bunch who are above these minor league bungles, being shining examples to us and our children. If you're confused, just try it for yourself. Being 'short lived', means that something has, or is in possession of, a short life, therefore it uses the long i sound.
Example: "I love skydiving, but the pleasure is so short lived".
Which of course leads me to the natural conclusion that people just should not use sayings of which they are not entirely certain. Misusages spread like a virus. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, October 25, 2005 - 12:52 AMWouldn't the saying be "short lifed" then? I maintain "short lived." I haven't been convinced. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, October 26, 2005 - 11:25 AMThe other day, much to my horror, I opened my voter pamphlet to see a typo - "aadministrative" - HELLO? This is our democracy at work. No wonder we elect who we elect when we have such a poor grasp of the language, and I am not referring to those with English as a second language, but those with English as a FIRST language.
Oh, and people, it's pointsettIA, not pointsetta. Look it up. I swear it's true. And the I is NOT silent.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, October 26, 2005 - 5:44 PMActually, it's "poinsettia".
They're poisonous to cats.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, October 26, 2005 - 7:07 PMAnd while we are in the garden, allow me to point out the beautiful magenta fuchsias, hanging in the baskets. If you remembered that the flower was named for a 16th century botanist named Fuchs, then you have no doubt pronounced it correctly. However, it seems that you are once again in the minority, as most people I've heard say it 'few-shia', or worse yet, 'fewsha', even a large percentage of those who work in greenhouses. Sad, so sad. Leonhard Fuchs deserves better.
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Wed, October 26, 2005 - 7:22 PMFreckles,
It is good that you are at least giving it some thought, even if you haven't really wrapped your mind around the concept. If you would like another opinion on the matter, I suggest you visit yourdictionary.com and look for commonly mispronouced words and phrases. You will find this example listed in the 'L' section under the heading 'long-lived'. I stumbled on this site somehow last year, and found it extremely affirming, and learned a thing or two in the process. Now I'll expect you to change your speech and set an example for your friends. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 12:55 PM*sigh* I sit corrected. Though, they also mention "often-ofen," and I'm not sure about that, still. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 2:00 PMas for "often-ofen," i personally would consider that to be simply the case of an individual's pronunciation, and not a matter that deserves correcting.
a better example of the same thing that i've come across many times is the fact that people seem to be divided on whether or not to pronounce the l in words like "folk."
i personally do pronounce it, but many people say "foke."
in an attempt to figure out where my pronunciation came from, i asked my parents, and to my surprise, my mom said, "folk," and my dad said, "foke."
go figure.
~e. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 5:04 PMYeah, now we're getting into regionalisms and the like, and I agree that it is mostly a matter of personal taste whether one uses 'offen' or 'oft-en', or 'folk' rather than 'foke'. I had a teacher in the third grade who was adamant about 'offen'. She could have spit nails to hear a child pronounce the t. But really, if you think about it, that word comes from 'oft', does it not? So, why should we not pronounce the t? This is probably best left to the etymology tribesmen, but it is a terribly interesting topic. -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, November 1, 2005 - 9:37 AMAck! I DID put an extra "t" in there. Thanks for correcting my correction!
Something that I have become aware of in my own pronunciation (and that of others) is that some of us pronouce clothes as close. Sticking that th in there is a bit of a struggle, but I do it anyway.
And I am on the silent t in often side. My husband and stepdaughter say it and it drives me insane. Or maybe I am already insane and I just notice it then! -
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Re: Butchered sayings?
Mon, November 7, 2005 - 1:18 AMIf we're on the topic of pronunciation quirks, I should mention that I pronounce newspaper as "noose-paper". "News" and other forms of the word get the usual 'z' sound.
Now that I think about it, it's probably because the next consonant is unvoiced -- I get the benefit of the easy-to-use "sp" blend.
Does anyone else here say it that way, or am I on my own? -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Butchered sayings?
Tue, November 22, 2005 - 2:22 PMIt kills me how getting "the lowdown" on something (ca. 1915, meaning to get the dirt) morphed into getting "the downlow" (slang ca. 1960s) and then into getting the...download.
I lose track of how many times a day I hear people say they need to "get the download on that situation" or meeting or whatever.
It sort of makes a little bit of sense in a roundabout way, but I still hate it. HATE. Almost as much as I hate "expresso." Coffee places actually put that on signs now.
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