Tag Archives: misused pears

Synonym rolls and other misused pears

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Here’s another in my occasional series on fun with homonyms: really stupid tweets. Even careful writers can let their fingers make a wrong choice. If someone types there instead of their, no spell checker will find it. But some people just don’t know any better. Or don’t care. Twitter even beats student term papers as a source of real howlers. Where else would someone write, “Just made me some synonym rolls”? The rolls looked good in the picture, but how long did it take to find the ground synonym in the spice rack?

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Don’t overdue it and other misused pears

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The English language has plenty of opportunities for careless writers to make mistakes with homonyms. Lovers of language have a lot of fun spotting them. I have lots of fun with homonyms provided they’re someone else’s mistakes. If I see one of my own, I destroy the evidence. Hopefully, before someone else points it out! It’s the holiday season, which a lot of people find stressful. So one of the helpful posts I found online counseled people to pace themselves and not try to do too much. Good advice, but what the author actually wrote was, “Don’t overdue it” instead of “don’t overdo it.” I suppose a lot of us are overdue for taking it easy.

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I shutter to think of misused pears

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I neglected to write down the sentence where someone wrote shutter instead of shudder. But the booboo gives another humorous example of someone making mistakes with homonyms. Or in this case, near homonyms. Shutter, whether on a window or camera, is a noun. It’s not something anyone can actually do. Can’t you see how it would make an English teacher quiver with fright—shudder? Read on for some fun with homonyms in my occasional series on misused pears, um, pairs of words.

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Hearing double: can you identify the homophones?

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Hector bawled when he went bald. Sara threw a shoe through the window to shoo a rabbit from her garden. Pirates seize cargo on the high seas. Welcome to the wacky world of homophones. Homophones are two or three words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. They are a type of homonym. I have had fun over the years pointing out when writers have chosen the wrong word of such a pear pair in my occasional series Misused Pears. I no longer read the emails or visit the websites that provided the best howlers. And so, I haven’t come across enough new ones lately for another post. I know no better alternative than a quiz. Most of following prompts suggest a two-word answer, a pair of homophones. There’s one threefer. 

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Air on the side of caution: more misused pears

Reading, Writing, Research Posted on by 2

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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