'Scientology' is a tautology. TriStar/Getty Images

What is the most overused word in the English language at present? âIncredible.â Just count how many times it crops up in an eveningâs TV viewing. Itâs almost never used literally. âIncredibleâ literally means not to be believed, but when people say they work incredibly hard theyâre not inviting you to disbelieve them. The English language is rich in superlatives â supreme, extraordinary, magnificent, exceptional, astonishing â but only three are in regular use: incredible, amazing and fantastic. The runaway success of âincredibleâ is currently being challenged by the clunky âimpactfulâ. âImpactâ moved centre stage fairly recently, ousting âeffectâ. Instead of asking if something is impactful you could just ask if itâs effective, rather as the bureaucratic phrase âon a daily basisâ could be replaced by the simpler âevery dayâ. But some gluttons for linguistic labour prefer four words where two would do.
A few years ago, the ground suddenly became the floor. For centuries the ground has been outdoors and the floor indoors, but now people fighting in the street are said to roll around on the floor. Armed police confronting a criminal in a park now shout âGet down on the floor!â when they mean the ground, to which a smart villain might reply âBut there isnât a floor around here!â You can find some fascinating plants in the woods if you look on the floor. Youâre unlikely to find an existential crisis there, however. Existential crises are also a recent phenomenon, and involve a use of the word âexistentialâ you wonât find in any dictionary. It doesnât mean âimminentâ or âsevereâ, it means âactually existingâ. So an existential crisis is an actually existing one, which is the only kind of crisis youâre likely to come across. Non-existential crises are as rare as Trotskyist taxi drivers. If you want to impress your friends at dinner parties, you could say: âThe morning star and the evening star are conceptually distinct but existentially identicalâ, meaning that the words mean different things but refer to the same actually existing object (the planet Venus). Or perhaps you should just say: âI had an incredibly impactful existential crisis on the Hyde Park floor.â
Some verbal innovations stick and some donât. âHopefullyâ, for example, doesnât mean âIt is to be hoped thatâ, which is what everyone uses it to mean; it means to do something while full of hope. But nobody is going to abandon the term just because a professor points this out, so what once would have been a misuse is now an acceptable usage. This is part of how languages work. The archaic word âanonâ once meant âright awayâ, but given the human tendency to procrastinate it came to mean âsoonâ or âshortlyâ. For much the same reason, âIâll be with you immediatelyâ means the opposite of what it says, while âpresentlyâ once meant âright awayâ but now means âin a whileâ. âA mental health episodeâ also means the opposite of what it says. Itâs just that people canât bring themselves to talk about mental illness.
To refute is not to deny something but to prove that itâs wrong. So when someone says âI refute thatâ, you could always say, âAlright then, go on, refute itâ. These days, âliterallyâ is no longer to be taken literally. Someone described Ghislaine Maxwell as âliterally the apple of her fatherâs eyeâ, which would have seriously affected his vision. People now literally explode with rage or literally fall through the floor with astonishment. Pubs are âliterally just down the roadâ â rather, perhaps, than metaphorically so.
âCriteriaâ and âphenomenaâ are now used as though they are singular nouns. Even my computer does this in the case of âcriteriaâ. People who are trying to talk or write in a âpoliteâ way (Morrissey in his autobiography, for example) say things like âItâs an exciting time for you and Iâ, probably because they think âyou and meâ is too colloquial. But âyou and meâ is correct here â or, to put the point in a quaintly old-fashioned lingo nobody speaks any more, a pronoun takes the accusative case after a preposition. âItâs Iâ is grammatically correct but unacceptable; weâd say âItâs meâ instead.
A âfulsomeâ apology isnât whole-hearted but grovelling. The word âinternetâ is strictly speaking a tautology, like âunmarried bachelorâ, since all nets are inter. One of a million good reasons for not becoming a Scientologist is that thatâs a tautology too: âlogyâ means âknowledgeâ and so does âscienceâ, so âScientologyâ means the knowledge of knowledge. Itâs doubtful that being told this would induce Tom Cruise to tear up his membership card. Or consider âShe may potentially go on to study law in Berlinâ. Spot the superfluous word in that sentence. âPotentiallyâ is almost always unnecessary. A lot of people stick in a âpotentiallyâ when they use the future tense, but as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein might have said, itâs like a cog in the machine of language that isnât meshing with anything.
Lots of verbal expressions have changed over time. We used to describe a collection of things as âseveralâ or âmanyâ, but now itâs the more technical-sounding âmultipleâ. There used to be questions about the steel industry, but now theyâre around the steel industry. Things were once up to you but now theyâre down to you. They were once sorted out, but now theyâre just sorted. Once upon a time only babies and parcels were delivered; now everything is. âBegging the questionâ used to mean assuming the truth of something youâre trying to prove, but for the last century or so itâs come to mean raising a question.
There used to be changes, but today theyâre almost all sea-changes or step-changes, while some windows have become brief, generous or rapidly narrowing, which our ancestors would have found as puzzling as doors being neurotic or munificent. People used to say that they were standing in a queue, but nowadays they say that they were stood in it. The same goes for âwere sittingâ and âwere satâ. To use that old-fashioned lingo again, the imperfect tense is giving way to the perfect. Since these changes are almost certainly here to stay, this is a good example of how whatâs strictly speaking ungrammatical can become common currency. It isnât strictly grammatical to say âpolitics is the art of the possibleâ, but nobody is going to alter the âisâ to âareâ.
Good grammar forbids ending a sentence with a preposition, but you donât often hear âThis is a situation up with which I shall not putâ. T sounds are now regularly dropped off the ends of words (âstartinâ, âdeep in my hearâ), and may well vanish altogether in the future, but they arenât pronounced either in the poshest French, and thereâs no law that decrees that every sound in a word must be pronounced. If you live in Burnley or Barnsley, dropping your hâs may be the correct thing to do. If you live in Camden or Chipping Norton, or anywhere where âa pat on the backâ becomes âa pet on the beckâ, it probably isnât. Thereâs no reason why regional forms of speech should conform to Standard English. In fact, Standard English itself was once a regional form of speech. I went to school near Manchester, where pupils from small Lancashire mill towns would say things like âHast tha seen âim over yon?â or âAhâm reet jiggeredâ (Iâm really tired). Given the conventions of their linguistic community, this was the right way for them to talk.
Language is interwoven with our forms of life. To give an example: people today quite often use the word ânecessarilyâ unnecessarily, as in âIt isnât necessarily that all Tasmanian greengrocers are psychotic, itâs just that some of them are a bit eccentricâ. What they mean is that all Tasmanian greengrocers arenât psychotic at all, but adding a ânecessarilyâ makes the statement sound less definite, and being indefinite is what postmodern culture prizes, in contrast to being certain. Certainty these days is increasingly equated with dogmatism, so that to say âItâs nine oâclockâ is unpleasantly unambiguous, whereas âItâs like nine oâclockâ is suitably tentative, provisional, open-ended and anti-authoritarian. Not many postmodernists, however, are so cavalier about certainty when it comes to finding out whether their bank account has been raided, or whether a certain drug might cause foetal abnormalities.
Language is a central constituent of our humanity. Itâs true that some other animals employ highly complex sign-systems, but itâs unlikely that dolphins have come up with an equivalent of War and Peace, unless they are being remarkably furtive about it. Since language is the medium in which we hatch concepts, itâs what allows us to perform life-saving surgery, but also to turn flame-throwers on peasantsâ huts. So are we superior or inferior to creatures that can do neither? The answer is an unequivocal yes and no.
Pointing out linguistic abuses is a perilous business. Language is so intimate an activity that to criticise the way somebody uses it can feel like undermining their identity. People have fought and died over the right to speak a particular language, or the freedom not to speak one imposed on them by an alien power. In 19th-century Ireland, schoolchildren sometimes wore sticks around their necks in class, and the stick was notched each time they used an Irish word. At the end of the school day, the child with the most notches was beaten in front of its fellows. Yet the teachers who ran this system were mostly Irish themselves, and might well have been Irish speakers. They were concerned that their students should succeed in life, and speaking English was thought essential to that end. The Irish constitution exists in two versions, one English and one Irish. Both documents state that in the event of a discrepancy between the two, the Irish version will be deemed to take precedence. But the Irish version is widely believed to be a translation of the English version. This is the kind of thing the English call âvery Irishâ.
One peculiarity of language is that it is effectively infinite. Thereâs always more of the stuff to come. I could, for example, carry on writing this essay indefinitely, except for the fact that Iâm reet jiggered, so I wonât.
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SubscribeSpot on re the overuse of the word incredible. Politicians sound like morons these days
And what about sport commentators?
Amazing comment.
Iconic!
Everyone (!) does! It is my most hated word as it usually replaces the far more apposite ‘very’. Makes me cringe every time I hear it (ie several times a day).
This perversion is unprecedented.
2020 was the great year of “unprecedented”. It was incredible.
Thanks for that â a much-needed break from all of this weekâs doom prophesies.
You mean ‘polycrises’?
In America (or at least in California), Iâve noticed that people, especially young people, say âperfectâ instead of fine, okay, or yes. E.g., at a coffee house: âIâd like a small coffee, blackâ â response: âPerfect.â Is âperfectâ the new âawesomeâ?
Any new fad in the USA is bound to end up being imported into the UK in a year or so. So thanks, Benjamin, for giving us Brits a glimpse into our linguistic future.
Young Brits in cafĂ©s still say “awesome” when they are given a sticky bun, but mercifully, the person behind the counter usually maintains a grim British silence.
No, as you stated in your first sentence, it’s the new fine, okay or yes.
You’ve mentioned one of my bugbears – nobody says ‘may I have’, or ‘I’d like’ anymore, it’s always ‘can I get’.
If you’re getting it then you work there – Grr!!
You speak for me. I can’t stand “can I get”.
I always say âMay I have a cup of tea, please?â
II have been known to tell my daughter who sometimes uses the âcan Iâ abomination that I donât know if she can, but she certainly may as far as I am concerned!
Her response? âI knew that you would say that!â Very well then.
For some, dropping a ‘t’ is essential for career progression. Female Labour politicians deliberately drop t’s because they think it makes them sound more proletarian.
Not just female. Blair, Osborne and Sunak all did/do it
Whenever Sunak tries to sound sincere, he sounds just like Blair pretending to be sincere.
Ironically though the production of the glottal stop (which is the technical term for dropping ts) actually requires more vocal energy than the production of the voiceless, alveolar, plosive (or “t”)
In some parts of Scotland, not having a glottal stop is a badge of pride. It means that whole sentences can be made up of vowels and everyone in the tribe gets it. Outsiders, not so much!
I understand French better than I understand some Glaswegians.
Overuse of superlatives has ruined sports commentary. If a goalkeeper touches the ball, the commentator invariably describes it as an âincredible saveâ. Wrong on many levels.
I’ve never understood what a “stonewall penalty” is.
Nor commentators “betting their mortgage” on a game – a mortgage being a debt and not an asset. I’d happily bet away my mortgage, but haven’t found any takers yet.
But finally, a Terry Eagleton article out of the top drawer (yes, incorrectly starting a sentence with “but”).
I think its where you fail one of their diversity audits and loads of trans activists start attacking you on Twitter.
Chapeau!
Newspapers have spoiled the reporting of news too. So there is a ‘War on Drugs’ but no soldiers are involved. Politicians ‘attack’ each other but there is no actual violence or blood on the floor (or ground). Snow ‘blankets Britain’ but only a few high hills and mountain tops get any major snowfall.
No wonder people become desensitised to exaggerated speech – so activists try to intensify their language to apocalyptic proportions. Garnering more indifference.
The best one has to come from the BBC, natch… (sorry!)
A headline proclaimed that December in the UK was the “hottest on record”
Of course, what was meant was the “mildest” but that wouldn’t fit with the endless climate scare narrative.
If it was referring to absolute temperature then ‘hottest’ is surely correct? ‘Mildest’ is a subjective word referring to the comfort of the individual concerned. Still, needlessly bashing the BBC is a popular sport herewith.
Warmest?
The current exaggeration is the use of genocide to mean killing more of your enemy than the enemy has killed on your side, as if war should involve a strict t*t for tat and no more. Traditionally you went on killing until the enemy sued for peace and laid down their arms. Genocide should be confined to deliberate attempts to wipe out a people who have surrendered and are no longer at war.
That save inspired me with awe
“How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks”
“I was inquiring about the state of your health, not your moral probity”
What a wonderful retort! I also commend you for using the word probity, which is not commonly used at all anymore. Its lack of usage might be interpreted as aptly fitting for a society that lacks moral clarity and principles!
This problem of the sloppiness of spoken English arises because English speakers are not forced to learn a second language. A new language forces you to listen very intently and you become aware of bad grammar and bad practices.
I speak four languages and it is quite noticeable that native English-speakers are the sloppiest (should that be most sloppy?). I compare here the written word with the spoken word in each language.
At least that’d spare those learning English as a second language from “sloppy seconds”
“I speak four languages.”
#MeToo.
I’d rather say that English is the most flexible and subtle of the (four) languages I know, often given to re-purposing familiar words in a striking way, which is why it has one of the richest literatures in the West (I don’t know any Asian, Arabic or African languages unfortunately). The French try to keep control of their language through the pronouncements of the Academy; the Spanish through their official dictionary. The Germans make up new words by accumulating existing words to produce grotesque neologisms. Polish, a beautiful language, is fully inflected which, again, limits its inventiveness in my inexpert opinion.
Polish has quadruple negatives, which is not unconfusing.
And in Malay, one man is âorangâ, and two men are âorang orangâ. Disappointingly, it stops there, or your review of, say, âTwelve Angry Menâ would take a while to write down.
Repetition in Malay and Indonesian works as an amplifier as well as a numerical multiplier. For instance “jalan” means “walk” (as well as “road/street”), and “jalan jalan” means “run”.
Haha!
Really? Portuguese people seem to me to miss out half the words in each sentence.
True
What is true English? We were taught in English but it was nothing like what we spoke at home. I spoke Doric with one half of my family and Scots with the other. Neither is “sloppy” English. I learned BSL as an adult and it is nothing like English either.So please explain what English is and how “sloppy” English differs from “sloppy” Italian, German or French, for example.
I would say that each of the versions with which you are familiar qualify as proper English , but think the things about which the author complains can be called sloppy English, which is to say lazy, or clichéd. Ironically, it usually means adding adjectives, or prefixes.
I like it that many different accents or dialects have survived, e.g. Liverpool and Manchester, and sad that in some places, they haven’t. In my youth, the Sussex accent was often to be heard around us, especially from farmers and agricultural workers, but I haven’t heard it for years.
The author chose one of my unfavourites, ‘step-change’, but ‘epicentre’ is surely even more irritating, since it has a meaning of its own. I’d agree that ‘incredible’ is incredibly over used, especially by politicians. I could fill pages with such clichĂ©s and jargon, but prefer to do something rewarding.
Using ‘I’ instead of ‘me’ is amusing, because the speaker is trying to be correct by not using ‘me’ when it should be ‘I’.
If I were speaking publicly, I’d be worried that I might make a grammatical error, and am then surprised and disappointed that journalists and politicians, who are mostly well paid, and presumably well-educated and experienced, will create what I consider to be distractingly bad English, especially when they had the chance of checking it.
For my part, I often re-read what I have written, and delete anything superfluous, especially adjectives or superlatives.
Does âtrueâ English even exist?
âIncredibleâ literally means not to be believed”
No it doesn’t, it means not able to be believed.
“Existential crises are also a recent phenomenon, and involve a use of the word âexistentialâ you wonât find in any dictionary. It doesnât mean âimminentâ or âsevereâ, it means âactually existingâ.”
Get a grip, Terry. The phrase “existential crisis” clearly denotes a threat to continued existence. Hence “existential” is being used in a way which clearly aligns with its dictionary definition.
âlogyâ means âknowledgeâ
No it doesn’t, it means “study”. “Biology” is the study and not the knowledge of living organisms.
“Things were once up to you but now theyâre down to you.”
In this context, “up” denotes choice and “down” denotes responsibility or blame.
Reminds me of the expression ‘He was up before everyone else was down, that is down before everyone else was up’. A language designed to confuse foreigners.
All languages are designed to confuse foreigners.
Thank you Richard. You did this better than I could.
Ha! As much as I loved the article, your pedantic corrections are even better. Let’s be language Nazis, but have fun doing it.
Excellent work Richard.
“Study” is only one meaning of “-logy”, based of folk etymology. If biology is the study of life, and bio means life then logy must mean study. But biology means not only the studying of life but the entire body of knowledge of life so -logy (which comes from “logos”, which means “word/speech” or “reason” but not “study”) also means “knowledge” i.e. science, which was the original meaning anyway. See “History of Biology” on Wikipedia
Almost.
ââŠlogyâ means âpertaining to wordsâ, from the Greek âlogosâ (a word). Hence âBiologyâ is âwords about lifeâ.
âKnowledge about lifeâ should, strictly speaking, be referred to as âBiosophyâ, using the Greek word âsophiaâ (âknowledgeâ, as in âphilosophyâ, the love of knowledge).
âKnowledgeâ means (literally) âknowing wordsâ.
Of course, study leads to âwordsâ, and knowledge, so ââŠlogyâ has come to refer to study AND knowledge.
But true pedantry necessitates accuracy.
Yes, a somewhat problematic article. But it is what it is and we are where we are.
Now we know who Richard Craven is, but questions remain.
Hats off to Terry. A whimsical, if occasionally inaccurate, essay.
When I saw the title and the author I expected some intellectual contortion attempting to convince me that the words men and women have no objective meaning, or equity actually means equality, or some other justification of leftist distortion.
Language evolves, its generally not something to get too stressed about, except in particular cases where it evolves too quickly for shared understanding.
That said, I doubt I’ll ever fully reconcile myself to the modern use of “literally” to mean its exact opposite.
A colleague once told me that her brother’s ‘phone was literally glued to his ear. I literally jumped down her throat.
The Prof is a bit unreliable on some of these: as already pointed out by others, “existential” does not mean “existing”; it means “having to do with existence”. So an “existential threat” is a threat to existence, not an existing threat.
I agree that woods don’t have floors, but oddly forests do.
Loved this. The mental health one particularly grates. Seeing posters for charities that say ‘We all have mental health’, etc. If that were true, those organisations wouldn’t need to exist!
The thing I like about the English language is its illogicalities and warpings as the comparative lack of grammar is made up for by the shedload of words. Awful – full of awe, and Wonderful – full of wonder – mean the opposite. Fast means both quick moving and stuck (and not eating). Sink both holds water and is enveloped in water. Other languages even adopt new words that are English-like because English allows it – eg shampooing, bicing or Fukuppy (look it up), while English maintains its abuse of mottos and bon mots where and when ever it can.
Cleave.
..age (rocks and wrinkles, of course)
And even words like shampoo were imported into English in the first place – further underlining its flexibility in both in/out trays.
Thereâs an apocryphal(?) claim that Wren was complimented on his design and construction of St Paulâs with the flattering notion that it was not only awful, but pompous and terrible too. Which is to say (or was), awesome, magnificent and inspiring the fear of god.
At the risk of being linguistically abusive…
The word internet comes from the connection of local networks together into one large interconnected network. It is the thing between different nets that joins them together so it is inter net.
Questions around something accurately infers the questioner most definitely wants to avoid any direct questions about something. A subtle linquistic cue not to ask difficult questions. It’s usage is more common now because direct questions are, like, literally hate, right?
Politics is syntactically singular as are many other words ending in ics such as mathematics and economics. It is grammatical to say “politics is the art of…” just as it is grammatical to say “mathematics is the study of…”.
“Existential crises are also a recent phenomenon, and involve a use of the word âexistentialâ you wonât find in any dictionary. It doesnât mean âimminentâ or âsevereâ, it means âactually existingâ. So an existential crisis is an actually existing one, which is the only kind of crisis youâre likely to come across. Non-existential crises are as rare as Trotskyist taxi drivers.”
He lost me here. ‘Existential’ means relating to existence. So if I find myself at a point at which my very existence is somehow in question, this constitutes an existential crisis.
For example, if I am a devout monk, and suddenly irrefutable proof presents itself that God is a flying spaghetti monster, this would disrupt my entire system of belief (that which properly constitutes my existence as a monk), and therefore qualifies as an existential crisis.
I believe the appearance of the word ‘existential’ arose from the emergence of the French philosophy of “Existentialism” which emerged in my lifetime and so excited us self-appointed intellectual teenage rebels in the 60’s……
Yes. To me, an existential crisis is a psychological crisis regarding the meaning of life, usually over a newly perceived âlackâ of meaning. âWhy am I alive?â, in short.
‘Internet’ isn’t a tautology, it’s a pleonasm. As is âunmarried bachelorâ.
Surely the most ubiquitous false understanding of word meaning I come across is “woke simply means being awake to injustice”. Yes, it is undoubtedly the case that it is the origin of its meaning. But if you point out that multiple meaning of words can occur over time, one is met with the objection that theirs is the dictionary definition. Well, all right, get a more up to date dictionary then. If you point out that a 1960 dictionary has the word “gay” as cheerful and no reference to same sex preference, the penny may well drop. To which I have found a common response is “oh, you’re just playing with semantics”. As if the implication that being aware of social injustice means you therefore accept the identity politics and intersectionality narrative of the woke isn’t!
The irony being that itâs they/them who are playing with semantics.
A Terry Eagleton article that I enjoyed.
There is necessarily a first time for everything.
Sometimes linguistic evolution loses useful distinctions. ‘Compared with’ refers to differences; ‘compared to’ refers to similarities. But ‘compared with’ has almost disappeared and nearly all comparisons nowadays are ‘to’.
..
So an existential crisis is an actually existing one, which is the only kind of crisis youâre likely to come across. Non-existential crises are as rare as Trotskyist taxi drivers.
No, try global warming. Non-existential.
While “unacceptable”, “direction of travel”, “the government (or a country) have”, “weather bomb”, “what do “we” know”, and countless other media fads add to the mix.
I haven’t yet figure out how to AI to do the analysis or get the answer, but dare say “absolutely”, if not the most ‘abused’ word [at least in the US] is in the top five. The better word is ‘yes’. And just for good measure, the use of ‘myself’ when the correct word [is there still such a creature?] is ‘me’, should also get some air time [or is it ‘etime’?].
You have to love words.
People are terrified of using “me” It’s fun to use as a kind of secret snobbery- knowing you are right even though your public feels embarrassed for you thinking you are wrong.
The trend here is the USA that is driving me crazy is:
“I’m sorry”
“Your good”
Can we not be sorry anymore?
One of my bugbears is when people answer “absolutely” instead of “yes” to a question. This has become the norm in TV and radio interviews, where the interviewee presumably thinks it makes them sound more authoritative.
And one more: when did “annual leave” take over from “holiday?” Once upon a time, only military personnel took annual leave; now every office worker in the land using this phrase in their email auto-replies when they’re on holiday. Why? Is it supposed to sound more purposeful and less frivolous?
He missed out the worst new offence, thankfully mostly confined to advertising (for now?): the use of adjectives in place of adverbs and even nouns. So “eat beautiful”, “find your happy”. Anyone have any idea how this atrocity came about?
How about nouns used as verbs: he ‘summitted Mt Everest” “She medalled at the Olympics”.?
Or adjective to noun as in physicality. A word that seems to have been created by sports commentators.
Quite a few get started that way: “On the 3-1 pitch, a high fastball, Babe Ruth homered to dead center field”
That type of usage is probably at least 100 years old.
I think it came over from the USA.
Perhaps it journeyed here?
Maybe it was âgiftedâ to UK by USA?
Only after the UK reached out to the USA.
Stop blaming us for all your problems. Floor for ground is your abomination not ours.
American resident and citizen here. I’ve heard New Yorkers use it, since a few more years ago than Eagleton suggests. I think it’s more of a hyper-metropolitan thing.
But amen on the blaming front. When I visit my birth country of Canada from time to time, I get inundated with a lot of blame, as if big bad Uncle Sam ruined their otherwise-paradise and I had a lot to with it myself. What a cheap alibi!
I suspect youâre correct!
My bad.
Sounds like it came from Japan. They are very good at such mystifications.
The words you will find in the headings of Guardian Op-Eds: “vile”, “chilling” and “terrifying”.
Whenever the fright wigged spokeswoman for Joe Biden is asked a question and she answers, ââIâm not gonna speak to thatâ, my eyes literally roll out of my head.
But only after they have “circled back to it”……
*figuratively.
“The bus will leave momentarily,” said the Californian driver. For a moment I thought we’re not going to get far in however many milliseconds that is.
“I’m disinterested in classical music,” a colleague told me. I didn’t probe him about whether he had a preference for Beethoven or Mozart, Bach or Boulez, orchestral or chamber, etc. I was uninterested in whatever his answer would be.
“It was fortuitous that you didn’t fall off the cliff when you went that close to the edge,” she said. It was certainly fortunate but I was very careful and the chance was pretty low.
Some changes to our use of words don’t matter much but we do also lose meanings that will then require whole sentences to explain clearly, especially ‘disinterestd’.
I’ve noticed people more and more when referring to floor they call it the ground. smh
Like, this is incredibly problematic and quite concerning. I’m literally going to need time to process it all.
Having, as requested, made way for a younger director I wrote to the manager âI trust all goes well for you in the future.â
I was thanked for my âwell wishesâ. I shuddered but as English is not the native language of the person in question I let it pass.
I wrote to my successor, a North American: âI send you my good wishes on your appointment to the boardâ.
The response was : âThatâs very kind of you to reach out [more shudders] David. Thanks for the well wishes.â
This time I could not let it pass and wrote: ââwellâ is the ADVERB of the ADJECTIVE âgoodâ.
The word âwishâ can be a verb or a noun: I wish[verb] to be an engine driver when I grow up/ my wish[noun] is to be an engine driver when I grow up.
You will note that I sent you âmy good wishesâ as in that context wishes is a noun. I could have written âI wish you well in your new positionâ. In this case I am using âwishâ as a verb so it requires the adverb âwellâ.
You cannot have âwell wishesâ as that is pairing an adverb with a noun. The correct term is âgood wishesâ.
Final response : ‘I learn something everyday.’…….I wonder!
What does this essay literally have to do with?
No mention of the word, “awesome”? It must be in the top 10 most overused and inappropriate words ever used!
Judging by the countless number of letters responding to this article…..
I enjoyed this article and liked its sense of purpose: precision as opposed to ‘perversion’–interesting choice of the latter word. The author mentions one of my bugbears, the current use of ‘around’ instead of ‘about’, which to me is imprecise, e.g., to walk ‘around’ a ship is to visit its outside only, while to walk ‘about’ a ship is to walk within it, thus becoming more familiar with its features. ‘Around’ can be misused in other ways, too. To talk ‘around’ a subject suggests circumlocution, whereas to speak ‘on’ one means to discuss it in detail. The author may be right in saying that language changes don’t usually correct themselves, but there can be no harm in pointing out better usage so that those interested in clarity of meaning can learn from it. (Next: use of ‘your item has shipped’ as opposed to ‘has been shipped’? –but that might be too much for today.)
Since when did âany moreâ become one word? When Microsoft spell checker decided it was. Look in any older dictionary and it doesn’t exist as a word. Itâs really annoying when the Spellchecker keeps misspelling!
I think I hit the jackpot for victimisation by automiscorerction yesterday, when the sentence Happy New Year to you was corrected to Hippy New Gear to youtuber.
Unprecedented is the new buzz word in Australia now. Recent bad weather across much of Queensland is being described as unprecedented. Except it is not unprecedented. People are just too lazy to look at historical records to see if there has been similar rainfall in the past. The problem is that more people are living in areas subject to flooding because old records were not examined to see if there was flooding in the past before the new developments were approved.
It’s so easy to throw the label of “pedant” around and claim that all change equals growth. But that’s not quite true, is it?
Surely the test for any linguistic innovation is whether it easily makes things more clear (like “verbing” a noun – to google, to impact, to facepalm) or obscures the meaning of a statement, or destroys the usefulness of a word that already exists.
As i heard a friend say recently, “Did you mean ‘literally’ or millenialiterally?”
âGood grammar forbids ending a sentence with a prepositionâ
Sure. In Latin. đ
I miss adverbs. Did sports commentators start this?
May we please all just stop using the word ‘gift’ as a verb? It’s “this was given to me [as a gift]” not “this was gifted to me.” Same with “spend” acting as a noun in corporatespeak.
I have to respectfully disagree with your thoughts on “gifting”. If I give my wife my coat on a cold day, it might be seen as a courteous, even a chivalrous act. If I gift her my coat at Christmas, not so much.
I have great respect for our language, but when a word fills a need that no other word does, I’m all-in on linguistic expansion.
Not sure I’ve ever heard “spend” as a noun. Britcorporatespeak?
Having lived in Boston USA recently I noticed that servers in cafes and restaurants would say ” Of Course” after you told them your selection, which I found jarring and really odd. Has this usage appeared in the UK?
My pet bete noir is âat this moment in timeâ, meaning ânowâ.
Itâs often used by minor officials when turning down a reasonable request.
I could use this as a marketing opportunity for our book on the usefulness of having knowledge about language and linguistics, but not sure I’m allowed!
Great article. Any ideas on consequences for future literature of writers adhering to preferred pronoun rules? I recently read a passage in Deborah Levyâs August Blue (if I remember correctly) in which she writes about a young boy who insists on they/them instead of he/him. It was well written but for me it confirmed that some changes to our language should not be accommodated, particularly in writing. I.e. use of the wrong pronouns is really confusing, doesnât convey meaning precisely and isnât compatible with clear written English.
My absolute irritant is ‘hope that helps’.
Hope that helps.
For me, the corruption of language is most evident with the abuse of pronouns.
Try asking people who use the words genocide and apartheid if they really know the definition.
I guarantee the majority don’t.
Well, what are ya gonna do about it when you ain’t reet jiggered?
No Tasmanian greengrocer is psychotic. This seems like the only unambiguous way to verbalize that state of affairs.
an unequivocal yes and no. Made me laugh out loud! Literally!
A pet peeve of mine is when people start a sentence with âI meanâ when they havenât yet said anything they need to explain.
By far the worst neologism is overhype.
Another pet hate is the disappearance of the word “an.”
Actually, one of my pet hatreds is the nouning of the verb “hate”. English has a perfectly good noun for the purpose, “hatred.” Mind you, nouning verbs and verbing nouns are perfectly good ways of creating new usages in English, but they should be done when there isn’t already a good word to serve the purpose.
A lot of the examples of the corruption of English usage given are both spot on and at least drolly amusing. However, I must take exception to the objection to the use of “existential”. The OED provides as its third definition, “Of, relating to, or concerned with individual human existence, esp. as seen from the point of view of existentialism; of, relating to, or characteristic of existentialism; having, or prompted by, a keen awareness of individual freedom and responsibility,” attested by usage as early as 1873. Surely it is in this sense that the word is used to modify “crisis” in most instances of the phrase “existential crisis”.
‘Incredible’ is not at the top here in Canada. When you spell your name for a clerk, or when a student shows up to class, the typical response is one or more of: Awesome! Perfect! Amazing!
If ‘existential’ just means existing, what does ‘existent’ mean? ‘Existential’ can usefully mean ‘pertaining to existence’. Another gripe: when do we need ‘environmentally friendly’ when we already have ‘environment-friendly’? Americans are sometimes accused of murdering the English language, but they do know that ‘data’ and ‘politics’, like ‘criteria’ (thank you) are plural. A few of us even know that ‘decimate’ means to remove 10 per cent (greengrocers probably know this). If not, where should ‘devastate’ come in?
The most egregious phrase of the moment is surely ‘Lived experience’. Both in its absurd tautology (if you haven’t experienced it, it isn’t an experience) and in its simultaneous post-modern solipsism: my lived experience is all that matters, there are no blue whales in my world.
My current pet peeve word is âcarnageâ, as in âI went Christmas shopping and the trains were delayed and it was total carnage at the stationâ. Surely, it would only be carnage at the station if a train didnât stop, ran through the buffers, and maimed and killed intending passengers?
No mention of my current (non-) favourite -“Can I get …?” when the speaker means “May I have …?” Drives me crazy, and embarrasses my children when I reply “No, but I will get it for you.”
Gay used to mean happy and carefree, and faggots were something I ate once a week, with peas and mashed potato.
I sympathise with nearly all of this (and many of the additions from fellow readers below) but I have to take issue with one thing you wish to correct (wrongly):
‘It isnât strictly grammatical to say âpolitics is the art of the possibleâ, but nobody is going to alter the âisâ to âareâ.’
Well I jolly well hope they don’t, because politics here is used in a singular sense, as in ‘the art of politics’. Do you really want people to say ‘the art of the possible are politics’? Ouch.