Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.

  • KittenBiscuits@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 day ago

    Using weary/wary interchangeably. I am tired of people not being aware of the difference.

    Also, “decimated”. The original usage is to reduce by one tenth. It didn’t mean something was nearly or totally annihilated, but thanks to overuse, now it does.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      24 hours ago

      That “decimated” ship has sailed. The common usage changed long ago so getting pedantic about the original meaning does not help.

      We didn’t have internet then but we do now. This is exactly what we need. It’s good to have flexibility for new words, for slang, even new meanings but let’s make sure mistakes don’t change the meaning of things

      • morriscox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        14 hours ago

        The word internet refers to a network of networks and the Internet is the world wide network of networks. Like many words that require the use of a Shift key, most people use internet instead of Internet. Forgoing the use of periods is becoming quite common as well.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 hours ago

          Autocorrect is actually less convenient for punctuation. I’ll fight autocorrect when it substitutes random words but it can have my periods

      • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Yes. It’s infuriating that the months called “Seventh Month,” “Eighth Month,” “Ninth Month,” and “Tenth Month” are months 9-12.

        Stupid January and February fucking everything up…

          • tyrefyre@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            20 hours ago

            Actually January and February were added to the end of the calendar. Used to be March was the first of the year. Which is why Sept (month 7) through December (month 10) are months 7-10 after March.

            December was the last month of the year and then there was just this empty time from December through March, they didn’t have a month for it because they were agrarian and that time they didn’t really do anything anyway. March being the start of spring, being the logical time to start a new year for them.

            Later they added January and February. Which is why February has a short month, it was the last of the year, a logical place to have an odd number of days month.

            At some point someone decided January should be the first of the year and then moved it. I forget when that happened.

    • rektdeckard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 day ago

      I mean, having one in ten of your fellow soldiers murdered by their own commander is pretty horrific, and I think that’s the spirit of its modern usage.