eggcorns

[B_Stronzo]

REALTOR --- REALTY (pronounce as written)

Not "realator" ---- not "realaty"

(though very recently I've heard someone IN THE PROFESSION say both just that way)


Another?

"Chomping at the bit"

It's "Champing at the bit"

But try to say it the correct way and they'll look at you as though you have three heads.

 

[B_NineInchCock_160IQ]

Having taken many graduate-level Linguistics courses in recent years I've heard plenty of times that language is dynamic and evolving and have heard many nasty things said about "prescriptive" grammarians.

But I still have a couple of personal pet peeves. One of them is when people (and I see this ALL the time) write "would of" instead of "would've" or "would have." This is so common I've seen it published before. If you stop and think about it, "would of" makes absolutely no sense. But people don't stop and think about it.

edit: I see JBT already hit on this two posts before mine. Guess I should have read the whole thread first.

 

[joyboytoy79]

REALTOR --- REALTY (pronounce as written)

Not "realator" ---- not "realaty"

(though very recently I've heard someone IN THE PROFESSION say both just that way)


Another?

"Chomping at the bit"

It's "Champing at the bit"

But try to say it the correct way and they'll look at you as though you have three heads.

I've never heard "Champing at the bit." Is that a Bostonian thing? In the upper midwest, if you said "Champing" people would likely swat you.

 

[joyboytoy79]

...

edit: I see JBT already hit on this two posts before mine. Guess I should have read the whole thread first.

No, no... you should "of" read the "hole" thread. *winces*

 

[B_Stronzo]

I've never heard "Champing at the bit." Is that a Bostonian thing? In the upper midwest, if you said "Champing" people would likely swat you.

It's the origin of the mistaken "chomping" at the bit.

And it's not Bostonian per se. It's just the proper phrase in its original form.

Though the word "chomp" undoubtedly exists in newer more inclusive dictionaries it is not a legitimate word- having been taken from the mistaken aforementioned horse reference. Champing at the bit (go one quarter of the way down on the page)

It's as annoying and obviously mistaken to me as those who say "heart wrenching". It's "heart rending" since the expression implies tearing.

Oh hell jbt79 people have swatted me before and they will again but it's generally in frustration that I strive to keep a standard to the language.

 

[GoneA]

lip-singing

 

[Pecker]

wreck havoc / wreak havoc

 

[tygrrr]

I sometimes see guys state that they are dominate - always makes me wanna spank their asses

 

[dong20]

Oh hell jbt79 people have swatted me before and they will again but it's generally in frustration that I strive to keep a standard to the language.

I understand and sympathise no swatting intended by me. I used to feel as strongly about this I know you do. But travel in over 60 countries, the citizens of most of which don't speak English natively or at all has given me respect for anyone who even attempts to converse in a language other than one's own. I have found that English has an almost unique robustness and can be understood even when mangled horribly, far more than many other languages, and believe me I have mangled a fair few to the horrified consternation of those on the receiving end!

I understand to many that merely being understood is not enough to justify wholesale linguistic butchery and in principle I agree, but (and I know we are really talking about written language here) when I arrive in some dodgy hell hole at 3am - I'll take all the lingiustic breaks I can take.

I also long ago came to accept that I am powerless to prevent the gradual changes for good or bad in the language and no longer stress about it and have indeed grown to love its malleability. Maybe I'm just getting old but, when it comes to English, I can only control my own use of the language and perhaps to some degree that of those I interact with. Irritating as it may be when folk take a knife and fork to it and like you that sometimes makes me mad - there are far worse things wrong in the world to worry about!

EDIT : PS Add Pi-Kan pie to the list just to rub salt in the wound. It's not mine but I have heard it many times. :tongue:

 

[Pecker]

Baking carrot biscuits (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)

 

[B_Stronzo]

wreck havoc / wreak havoc

ABSOLUTELY PECKER

It's my opinion (though I don't know it as fact) that the only thing (linguistically) one can do with havoc is to "wreak" it.

Properly it cannot be "made".

 

[joyboytoy79]

It's the origin of the mistaken "chomping" at the bit.

And it's not Bostonian per se. It's just the proper phrase in its original form.

Though the word "chomp" undoubtedly exists in newer more inclusive dictionaries it is not a legitimate word- having been taken from the mistaken aforementioned horse reference. Champing at the bit (go one quarter of the way down on the page)

It's as annoying and obviously mistaken to me as those who say "heart wrenching". It's "heart rending" since the expression implies tearing.

Oh hell jbt79 people have swatted me before and they will again but it's generally in frustration that I strive to keep a standard to the language.

Ahh, always these things get so caught up in what happens to be the correct form of English. Would, you, for example, be annoyed if i asked you to do me a "favour"?

From the Oxford Dictionary (2005):
The original and better term for what horses do to their bits is champ. Chomp is an American variant. (Oddly, American English has transformed champ into chomp, but stomp into stamp.) The two spellings have undergone some degree of differentiation. What one champs is not actually eaten, but just bitten or gnawed, nervously. But to chomp something is to take a bite out of it and usually to consume it. In dialect, chomp is colloquially accompanied by the adverb down ( chompin’ down catfish). Chomp is sometimes mistakenly used in place of champ in the idiom—e.g.: “DreamWorks chomps [read champs ] the bit with ‘Whoa, Nelly!’ a world-beat rock album by Nelly Furado, on Sept. 26.” ( Billboard; Sept. 16, 2000.) The idiom champing at the bit evokes the image of an impatient horse, especially one eager for a race to start. In contemporary print sources, it is only slightly more common than the variant form, chomping at the bit.

From the American Heritage Dictionary (2003):

chomp (chhttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/AHD4/GIF/obreve.gifmp)
v. chomped, chomp·ing, chomps
v. tr. To chew or bite on noisily: a horse chomping oats. See Synonyms at bite.
v. intr. To chew or bite on something repeatedly: chomping on a cigar.
n. The act or an instance of vigorous biting: “He finished the last of his sandwich with a single chomp” (Anne Tyler)."

It seems to depend upon which side of the pond you dwell. Also of note, is that the british pronunciation of "Champ (to bite)" is the same as the American pronunciation of "Chomp."

 

[rawbone8]

ABSOLUTELY PECKER

It's my opinion (though I don't know it as fact) that the only thing (linguistically) one can do with havoc is to "wreak" it.

Properly it cannot be "made".

how about "endure the havoc"

weather that's rite or knot.

 

[D_Sheffield Thongbynder]

how about "endure the havoc"

weather that's rite or knot.

That will insure stormy whether, Raw.

 

[dong20]

ABSOLUTELY PECKER

It's my opinion (though I don't know it as fact) that the only thing (linguistically) one can do with havoc is to "wreak" it.

Properly it cannot be "made".

Well one could probably get away with crying havoc, creating havoc, or avoiding it, or even revelling in it...One could also, correctly havoc something as in "Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make among your works!" ~ Joseph Addison, "To waste and havoc yonder world". ~ John Milton or, to cite from a tome we both have disdain for "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church" ~ Acts VIII-3.

It's one of my favourite words... :wink:

 

[B_Stronzo]

I understand and sympathise no swatting intended by me. I used to feel as strongly about this I know you do. But travel in over 60 countries, the citizens of most of which don't speak English natively or at all has given me respect for anyone who even attempts to converse in a language other than one's own. I have found that English has an almost unique robustness and can be understood even when mangled horribly, far more than many other languages, and believe me I have mangled a fair few to the horrified consternation of those on the receiving end!

I understand to many that merely being understood is not enough to justify wholesale linguistic butchery and in principle I agree, but (and I know we are really talking about written language here) when I arrive in some dodgy hell hole at 3am - I'll take all the lingiustic breaks I can take.

I also long ago came to accept that I am powerless to prevent the gradual changes for good or bad in the language and no longer stress about it and have indeed grown to love its malleability. Maybe I'm just getting old but, when it comes to English, I can only control my own use of the language and perhaps to some degree that of those I interact with. Irritating as it may be when folk take a knife and fork to it and like you that sometimes makes me mad - there are far worse things wrong in the world to worry about!

EDIT : PS Add Pi-Kan pie to the list just to rub salt in the wound. It's not mine but I have heard it many times. :tongue:

I agree completely.

I love this language and I account for its colloquialisms as they relate to its use in various English speaking countries. It's the wholesale butchering of it that has me leaning toward intransigence d20.

I find it as offensive as Americans very recently saying "standing in queue" rather than the standard "standing in line". It's similar to how I feel about "putting the dog down".

Growing up I heard Americans say nothing but "put the dog to sleep" when his time on this earth was spent. It smacks of an attempt to sound different or more literate when our various entirely proper local euphemisms can easily be used and applied in their original form.

Case in point:

The fellow who gave me my surname helped found a town called Raynham in the 17th century. I am the first generation in my family only not to have been born in that town. Obviously many local place names are taken from their English counterparts. All my life that town has been referred to as "Rain Ham" (equal emphasis both syllables).

Now (in the last twenty years) that ancestral town of mine is pronounced by more and more people "Rain' hm" (emphasis on first syllable). I know the previous pronunciation has been intact since the first incorporators of that township brought the name with them from England. So the pronunciation must have been a vernacular one to them (as non-English as it may sound to the present-day English reader).

Same is true for the following Massachusetts towns which are pronounced in two equally emphasized syllables. For example - all the following are pronounced here with equal emphasis to both syllables:

Framingham, Bellingham, Rockingham, Wareham, Eastham, Waltham

Oddly the following have more "Englishy" sounding pronunciaitons with the pronunciation emphasis on the first syllable:

Wrentham, Chatham, Dedham, Needham, Wilbraham

However:

Here we say "Harwich" rather than "Harrich" and "Norwich" rather than "Norrich".

Were these pronunciations how they came to us? I suspect so. But I've noted several visitors from the British Isles come to stay with my family (one Irene Fudge from Yorkshire) who roared out loud when I told her I was "spending the day in Harwich".

She said "what did you say?" I repeated it. She said "where I come from dear that's pronounced "Harrich".

Complex language eh?



Now - though I know completely to the contrary - I'm often corrected in my pronunciation of my ancestral town. It's just fucking annoying.

 

[dong20]

She said "what did you say?" I repeated it. She said "where I come from dear that's pronounced "Harrich".

Complex language eh?.

One of my personal favourites I hear all the time in London is Leicester Square pronounced as LY-Sester Square. I understand why but it still makes me smile. Some words, to me at least jump out as being pronounced other than they are written. There is a village in Cheshire called Cholmondeley but it's pronounced Chumley! Go figure.

 

[B_Stronzo]

Ahh, always these things get so caught up in what happens to be the correct form of English. Would, you, for example, be annoyed if i asked you to do me a "favour"?

From the Oxford Dictionary (2005):
The original and better term for what horses do to their bits is champ. Chomp is an American variant. (Oddly, American English has transformed champ into chomp, but stomp into stamp.) The two spellings have undergone some degree of differentiation. What one champs is not actually eaten, but just bitten or gnawed, nervously. But to chomp something is to take a bite out of it and usually to consume it. In dialect, chomp is colloquially accompanied by the adverb down ( chompin’ down catfish). Chomp is sometimes mistakenly used in place of champ in the idiom—e.g.: “DreamWorks chomps [read champs ] the bit with ‘Whoa, Nelly!’ a world-beat rock album by Nelly Furado, on Sept. 26.” ( Billboard; Sept. 16, 2000.) The idiom champing at the bit evokes the image of an impatient horse, especially one eager for a race to start. In contemporary print sources, it is only slightly more common than the variant form, chomping at the bit.

From the American Heritage Dictionary (2003):

chomp (chhttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/AHD4/GIF/obreve.gifmp)
v. chomped, chomp·ing, chomps
v. tr. To chew or bite on noisily: a horse chomping oats. See Synonyms at bite.
v. intr. To chew or bite on something repeatedly: chomping on a cigar.
n. The act or an instance of vigorous biting: “He finished the last of his sandwich with a single chomp” (Anne Tyler)."

It seems to depend upon which side of the pond you dwell. Also of note, is that the british pronunciation of "Champ (to bite)" is the same as the American pronunciation of "Chomp."

I think Americans inserting a "u" in favor, neighbor, harbor, etc. is an affectation so yes. With Canadians it's standard.

Plus Americans write "realize" rather than "realise". We covered it in another thread where one poster (dong20?) said it was closer to its Latin origin to write it with the "z". We also covered "gotten" in American usage which is now archaic in modern British Isles usage.

And of course you can cite examples of the inclusion of the non-word "chomp" jbt79. I said as much in the relevant post. But do I think it's a dumbing-down of the language? Yes.

 

[rawbone8]

You're a better person then me.

 

[B_NineInchCock_160IQ]

heart rending implies tearing.... but "heart wrenching" doesn't imply that. Seems like both expressions make sense to me.