Category Archives: English usage

Air on the side of caution: more misused pears

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That’s advice I saw somewhere about how not to fall for scams: “If you suspect the email could be legitimate, air on the side of caution anyway.” It’s an error of course, not an airor. The expression is err on the side of caution. Air and err are two homonyms that someone mixed up. Something I like to call misused pears. (Although actually the preferred pronunciation of “err” according to the American Heritage Dictionary is ur rather than air.) Lots of people err when typing, but not on the side of caution. I wouldn’t advocate being so cautious as to look up every word in a dictionary, but at least learn what the right word is and then proofread! But that mistake somehow reminds me of a sign I saw posted in a town where I used to live: “Do not air out your dog here.” I wish I had taken a picture of it. That sign isn’t a misused pear, just a very strange euphemism. Whoever posted it certainly didn’t care how much air came out of a dog!

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Where’s the proof? In the pudding? Clichéd confusion

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I just heard someone else say, “the proof is in the pudding.” What’s that supposed to mean? Sayings become clichés for a reason. They express a thought in a short, easily memorable form that people over a wide range of time and geography want to express. So it gets used over and over. Sometimes people get careless and don’t say it correctly. All meaning goes out the window, but unfortunately, the mangled version sometimes takes on a life of its own. It becomes as common as the correct, meaningful version, or maybe even more common.

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Eggcorns, a new word for misused pears

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Children eventually stop growing. The English language does not. Most new words catch popular fancy for a while, and then drop out of sight. Quite a few eventually get recognized by major dictionaries. Merriam-Webster just added 1,700 new words. “Eggcorn” now takes its place alongside malapropism, spoonerism, and mondegreen to describe a losing battle with using or understanding words. A malapropism substitutes a completely wrong word, as when Mrs. Malaprop (in the third act of The Rivals by Richard Sheridan) declares, “Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!” Not one of the italicized words means anything remotely like what she meant. Eggcorn, on the other hand, sort of make sense, as when someone refers to “old-timers’ disease” instead of “Alzheimer’s disease. In 2003 a blogger noted that he knew a woman who said “egg corn” instead of “acorn” and that there was no word to describe that kind of mistake. Linguist Geoffrey Pullam responded that “eggcorn” would be a very appropriate word. Its entry into a major dictionary’s word list indicates that, 12 years after the suggestion, “eggcorn” has demonstrated its usefulness and staying power. … Continue reading →

Do diligence is a must: more misused pears

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When I saw that comment in a forum thread I wondered, “How due you due do diligence?” It gives me an excuse to pass on some more fun with homonyms. I suspect hasty typing accounts for that neglect of due diligence. Many losing battles with homonyms seem to result from using the more common word when the less common is correct. A Christian devotional advised readers what to do in the throws of temptation. Throe, most often used in the plural, can mean a violent spasm of pain, or as a metaphor, a condition of agonizing effort or struggle. Against temptation, for example. A newspaper comic strip’s author miswrote a punchline: “It didn’t phase him.” Perhaps a faze he was going through? “Phase” has many different meanings as a noun. As a verb it means to carry out a plan by phases, in the sense of distinct stages of development. “Faze” means to disrupt someone’s composure. Confession: I almost typed “composer” instead of “composure.” I studied music long before I learned to be a librarian. For me, at least, “composer” is the more common word. My head knows the difference. My fingers? Not so much. But misused pears are not … Continue reading →

Queue the violin music and other misused pears

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I subscribe to several email newsletters. A couple of them are valuable for more than the information they convey. Their authors have a delightfully hard time choosing the right word from a pair or more of homonyms. One of these authors admitted to being stressed by something and apparently figured most of his readership wouldn’t be especially sympathetic. So he added, “queue the violin music.” “Queue” is a much more common word in British English than American English. It means a line of people waiting, say, to buy a concert ticket. As a classical music lover, it saddens me that the queue for violin music is always so much shorter than for rock music. But somehow I don’t think that’s what the writer meant.

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