PEEVES

[spiderwrangler]

PS- did anyone notice that Larry said "pacifically" instead "specifically" on the last session?

Yeah, I noticed and it bugged me. If you can't pronounce 'specifically', substitute another word like 'certain' or 'particular' (unless Cliff disagrees ).

[spiderwrangler]

As a biologist, here is one that gets me every time (not that it pisses me off, just stands out).

Adapt vs. Acclimate

Adaptation is something that happens over time to species whereas acclimate is something that refers to the individual ... so someone does not adapt, they acclimate to their surroundings.

I agree Evil...
Even more so is when people talk about evolving or evolution in a completely non biology context...

or assign desires and thought to things that don't. That one comes up a lot in this hobby (yeast WANT this, yeast KNOW that)

[snowcapt]

Please dont send em, code. Deja Vu.
Heres a ood one for "splained"
I love this uy, and I'm darn near certain that he is the most recorded drummer, in history, and you just miht learn to love hiom, too. PSSHT,PSSHT
My favorite word yet: defenestrate
How's the back, Code? Serious, or slipped disc?

[Cliff]

Thanks Code.
I stand corrected.
My peeve in this instance however, is not as to some guy who gets things wrong posting on the interwebs or in conversation, but as to people with loud public voices, because they mislead the masses. It was in my OP.


Another is Devolve. I can't recall how many bloody times some moron on the TV has wrongly used the word devolve trying to say how some thing has pulled a Me La Pah, Me La Pah Ha.

Don't you also hate it when people use obscure foreign language idioms to say things that are perfectly say-able in English? Ya know like the above which is Hebrew and which transliterates into "from bad to worse."

Anyway, the recent morons who've done it were Lyndsey Graham and Elliot Spitzer, both educated people who ought to have the smarts to not use words publicly when they don't know what they mean. Interestingly both were trying to talk about the stupid friggin Arab Spring pig-shit (don't get me started) and both were using words they didn't understand.

Devolve means to pass some kind of power from one governmental agency to another.
It does not mean me la pah, me la pah ha.

[Cliff]

Even more so is when people talk about evolving or evolution in a completely non biology context...

Yah and reminds me that somewhere I read that at no time in all recorded history has there ever been even one single instance of evolution that has been observed. The best any one has done was to extrapolate that it must have happened.

I agree that anthropomorphizing things is patently stupid and annoying when it's coming from a person above age 16. Nature didn't intend for use to be so ethnocentric. :-p

[spiderwrangler]

Yah and reminds me that somewhere I read that at no time in all recorded history has there ever been even one single instance of evolution that has been observed. The best any one has done was to extrapolate that it must have happened.

HA! By definition it isn't observable at a single instant in time!

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Languages change. Definitions of words change. Nouns change into verbs. I detest the use of "gift" as a verb. You "give" a "gift" to someone. You don't "gift them" a gift. But someone, somewhere started saying and it was picked up. Once it gets picked up it becomes part of the language, and the word meaning changes.

Languages that don't change are considered "dead." Like Latin or Ancient Greek. We may not like it, but that very changeability of the language is what makes English one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet.

I recommend H. L. Mencken's History of the English Language, or Bill Bryson's much more readable The Mother Tongue, is you want to see how our language has changed.

Anyone want to guess what I studied in college and grad school?

[thatguy314]

There are lots of these examples that people don't understand.

jealous v. envious
affect v. effect
convince v. persuade
explaination v. excuse
farther v. further
nautious v. nauseasted
hell, even can v. may is ignored these days

Some would call it the evolution of language. Frankly I think it's a sign of the necrosis of our language. I blame it on when English classes stopped teaching English and started only teaching literature. Americans don't learn grammar anymore, at least not to any significant degree.