Phrases that people often mangle or misuse

[Calboner]

That has got me thinking, at what point did Americans begin to use 'ass' to mean rear-end? These changes between American English and real English are interesting wink An ass is a mammal of the equine variety; 'arse' is yer arse, innit.

The earliest citation in the OED of the use of 'ass' in that sense is dated 1860, but it's the kind of thing that would not have appeared often in print, so it probably dates back well before that. Ever since I figured out that the original word for posterior was 'arse' (it appears in Chaucer as 'erse,' pronounced the same way; the German cognate is 'Arsch') and that the use of 'ass' for that purpose is a confusion with the name of a kind of animal, I have regretted the conflation. But as an American, I am pretty much stuck with it. I use the word 'arse' when I can, but it just doesn't carry well on this side of the Atlantic.

 

[vince]

One that always bugs me is people saying, "Don't cut off your nose despite your face", instead saying "to spite".

I've been hating "same difference" for years. I first heard it in Wisconsin when I was kid and using it was sure to earn a "whack upside the head" from Mum.

Wisconsin had some beauties. My favorite was, "I'll meet you down where the bus bends the corner around".

 

[earllogjam]

In my professional life, I use these all the time. :sorry: I also thank people in advance.

Yup,

"Thank you in advance." - how fucking presumptuous.

I still get that but it's usually on an email request to do something onerous - never face to face or even on the phone.

It's a chicken shit passive aggressive term.

 

[D_Kissimmee Coldsore]

The earliest citation in the OED of the use of 'ass' in that sense is dated 1860, but it's the kind of thing that would not have appeared often in print, so it probably dates back well before that. Ever since I figured out that the original word for posterior was 'arse' (it appears in Chaucer as 'erse,' pronounced the same way; the German cognate is 'Arsch') and that the use of 'ass' for that purpose is a confusion with the name of a kind of animal, I have regretted the conflation. But as an American, I am pretty much stuck with it. I use the word 'arse' when I can, but it just doesn't carry well on this side of the Atlantic.

Yeah, in Scots it's airse, erse or even aerse (though I've never come across that one) and Scots is quite like middle-English I believe. It's quite cool to think I often pronounce it as Chaucer did, makes me feel far less scaffy.

 

[midlifebear]

Are you sure that it was Greek? Or, if you are, are you sure that that is what it meant? The phrase "handwriting on the wall" refers to the story of Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 5). Belshazzar, King of Babylon, is holding a great feast when a hand appears and writes on the wall the Aramaic words "Mene, mene, tekel, parsin." The king calls in the prophet Daniel to interpret them. Daniel tells him that the words mean that God has weighed him and found him wanting and has numbered the days of his kingdom and will divide it among the Persians and the Medes.

You got me there, Calboner. I'm definitely not a great fan of the bible, however, it could have been Aramaic. For some reason (don't know why) I thought the original was a warning to the Trojan Prince, Hector, from the gods regarding his impending doom because he pissed off Achilles, who withdrew from the Trojan war leaving poor Hector on his own and unprotected. It's not in the Iliad but in one of the Epic Cycle of poems related to the events in the Iliad. But hey, what do I know? Aramaic, proto-Hitite -- "It's all Greek to me."

 

[Calboner]

Yeah, in Scots it's airse, erse or even aerse (though I've never come across that one) and Scots is quite like middle-English I believe. It's quite cool to think I often pronounce it as Chaucer did, makes me feel far less scaffy.

I did not know that about Scots, though it doesn't surprise me, given forms like 'laird' for 'lord'. But when I said 'erse' (Chaucer) was "pronounced the same," I meant that (as I believe but can't prove) it was pronounced the same as 'arse'. In Middle English and even early modern English (e.g., up to Shakespeare's time), 'er' before a consonant was pronounced as 'ar' in a lot of words. This practice, which I believe derives from Norman French (e.g., I remember bumpkins in one of Molière's plays who are represented as pronouncing the verb 'servir' as 'sarvir': cf. the older English form 'sarvant'), survives in the word 'sergeant', and, outside of North America, in the word 'clerk' (pronounced 'clark') and in names like 'Berkley' (also written more phonetically as 'Barclay'), 'Berkshire', etc. There is something similar in the words 'heart' and 'hearth', which we pronounce as if they had 'ar' in them, by contrast with words like 'heard', 'dearth', 'earth', etc., which are pronounced just as if spelled 'herd', 'derth', 'erth', etc. In some cases the 'ar' pronunciation survived, in others it was replaced by the 'er' pronunciation. There doesn't seem to be any pattern.

Anyway, you may or may not be pronouncing the word as Chaucer did, but the way in which Scots differs from standard English on this point certainly does reflect its adherence to older traditions of the language, whether in pronunciation or merely in spelling.

 

[D_Kissimmee Coldsore]

Ah, I see. You learn something new every day. Although I would pronounce dearth like dirth, rhyming with birth and not with earth and heard. But that's by the by. As far as Scots goes, I think it took a different path helped by additional contact with Gàidhlig/Norse as well as French which had a huge impact after 1066. Also Dutch.
Edit: This actually explains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Scots_language

Ony way, back tae the English.

 

[Meniscus]

I hired a tech writer, a wonderful woman, who "had the patience of Job" but she had her limits. She had created a large sign that hung above her door which was the original Greek for (paraphrasing here) "Unable to see the handwriting on the wall." She eventually moved onward and upward to greater things, but not before gathering her project manager and coworkers together, taking a photo of all of them standing under the sign, and presenting each with their own framed copy. I'm certain not one of them still has a clue what she was doing. I miss that woman.

Now that's my kind of woman.

 

[MarkLondon]

Hmm, the Great English Vowel Shift, anyone?

 

[midlifebear]

Hmm, the Great English Vowel Shift, anyone?

Yah, I'm a big fan of it. One of the wonders of Ingleesh. When I first learned about it I read everything available (pre Internet), getting books on loan from Cambridge and Oxford. I ate it up. The topic still fascinates me. And it took from the 1500's to the early 1800's to change, and then no one really took much notice until about 1870 because of different actors' hissy fits over vocal interpretations of Elizabeathen plays.

If it's so easy to make a dumb misinterpretation of the original intent of a common saying in English (this has nothing to do with the great vowel shift), imagine the ripple effects when Aborigines may have screwed up a tonal description of most of the Australian Continent they had never seen while humming a song line? One hum left instead of right and you'd be on a different coast! :wink:

 

[Calboner]

Wisconsin had some beauties. My favorite was, "I'll meet you down where the bus bends the corner around".

I think that if I heard someone say that I would think he was trying to be funny.

It must be a vestige of German influence -- "Der Bus biegt die Ecke um." If so, it's not the only such vestige in the English of the northern Midwest. A lot of people there use "bring with" and "come with" without an object, in the sense of "bring along" and "come along," respectively -- e.g., "I don't want to come back for it, so I'll just bring it with"; "You're welcome to come with." I am pretty sure that these are leftovers from past generations of German immigrants, who would use analogous constructions in their native tongue ("Bring es mit!", "Komm mit!"). And in Cincinnati, when people want you to repeat what you just said, they say "Please?" (apparently from the German "Wie, bitte?", or simply "Bitte?") instead of "Sorry?" or "Excuse me?"

 

[nudeyorker]

This is another personal favorite of mine... Can't see the forest for the trees
An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole, I would love to post this as a sticky in the "Politics" forum and the next time someone starts a thread of "Why was _______ banned?"

 

[Calboner]

Yah, I'm a big fan of it. One of the wonders of Ingleesh. When I first learned about it I read everything available (pre Internet), getting books on loan from Cambridge and Oxford. I ate it up. The topic still fascinates me. And it took from the 1500's to the early 1800's to change, and then no one really took much notice until about 1870 because of different actors' hissy fits over vocal interpretations of Elizabeathen plays.

You must be thinking of something else, Mr. Bear. The Great Vowel Shift started well before 1500, and most of it had occurred by Shakespeare's time. Of course, vowels have been changing continuously in English throughout its existence, but by 1500 the vowel of, e.g., the word 'see' was like that of the French 'si' rather than like that of 'c'est' or 'thé'.

 

[Drifterwood]

This is another personal favorite of mine... Can't see the forest for the trees

We say, "Can't see the wood for the trees."

We may have said forest before we cut them all down. Now there's irony.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

We say, "Can't see the wood for the trees."

Didn't your last girlfriend, on your return from Shenzhen, say she couldn't see the wood for the fleas?

 

[B_Hickboy]

"Irrespective" + "regardless" <> "irregardless". GOT IT, DUMBASS?!

 

[Calboner]

"Here, here!" A common error for "Hear, hear!"

 

[hungandpierced]

There are only two which really get my goat:

"Cheap at half the price"
OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS! If you half the price, then it IS cheap! The correct phrase is "Cheap at twice the price" with a sarcastic inflection used when discovering that something costs more than you expect/more than you think it ought to.

The second is "I could care less"

COULDN'T!!!!

Without wishing to tar an entire nation with the brush of ignorance, I genuinely only hear Americans misusing these phrases...Although the copy writer for The Guardian let a "could..." slip in a few weeks ago. I was incensed enough to write an email and got a reply saying the individual in question was American and hadn't yet 'picked up the nuances of UK English'...

I had to go make myself a cuppa...

 

[Calboner]

I don't think I've ever heard "cheap at half the price," certainly not from Americans, but I'll bet that most of my fellow citizens think that "I could care less" is a well-formed expression.

 

[Jovial]

The second is "I could care less"

COULDN'T!!!!

Without wishing to tar an entire nation with the brush of ignorance, I genuinely only hear Americans misusing these phrases...Although the copy writer for The Guardian let a "could..." slip in a few weeks ago. I was incensed enough to write an email and got a reply saying the individual in question was American and hadn't yet 'picked up the nuances of UK English'...

I had to go make myself a cuppa...

You don't understand sarcasm in the UK?